The commonly accepted history of FM radio is one of the twentieth century's iconic sagas of invention, heroism, and tragedy. Edwin Howard Armstrong created a system of wideband frequency-modulation radio in 1933. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), convinced that Armstrong's system threatened its AM empire, failed to develop the new technology and refused to pay Armstrong royalties. Armstrong sued the company at great personal cost. He died despondent, exhausted, and broke. But this account, according to Gary L. Frost, ignores the contributions of scores of other individuals who were involved in the decades-long struggle to realize the potential of FM radio. The first scholar to fully examine recently uncovered evidence from the Armstrong v. RCA lawsuit, Frost offers a thorough revision of the FM story. Frost's balanced, contextualized approach provides a much-needed corrective to previous accounts. Navigating deftly through the details of a complicated story, he examines the motivations and interactions of the three communities most intimately involved in the development of the technology -- Progressive-era amateur radio operators, RCA and Westinghouse engineers, and early FM broadcasters. In the process, Frost demonstrates the tension between competition and collaboration that goes hand in hand with the emergence and refinement of new technologies. Frost's study reconsiders both the social construction of FM radio and the process of technological evolution. Historians of technology, communication, and media will welcome this important reexamination of the canonic story of early FM radio.
Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: What Do We Know about FM Radio? 1. AM and FM Radio before 1920 2. Congestion and Frequency-Modulation Research, 19131933 3. RCA, Armstrong, and the Acceleration of FM Research, 19261933 4. The Serendipitous Discovery of Staticless Radio, 19151935 5. FM Pioneers, RCA, and the Reshaping of Wideband FM Radio, 19351940 Conclusion Appendix: FM-Related Patents, 1902-1953 Notes Glossary Essay on Sources Index
""Frost examines the extensive Armstrong archives to paint a more nuanced picture of the complex and tumultuous relationship between Armstrong and RCA, while tracing the 'pre-history' of FM going back to about 1900.""
