Columbians Ahead of Their Time
Edwin Armstrong
Edwin Armstrong "The continuous good fortune which has followed me, providing second chances at inventions when the first chance was missed and tossed away, has been all that a man could hope for and more than he has any right to expect." 

Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890–1954)
Inventor
Engineering 1913
Faculty 1913–54

Armstrong invented three of the electronic circuits fundamental to modern radio, television, and radar. The first was a new "regenerative" circuit, based on the audion tube, which eventually yielded the first radio amplifier. The second was a complex eight-tube receiver, known as the superheterodyne circuit, that amplified weak signals to a degree previously impossible. This circuit, which  Armstrong invented while serving as an officer in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, remains a basic component of nearly all radio and television receivers today. Most notably, he designed an entirely new system—wide-band frequency modulation (FM)—that offered the highest-fidelity sound yet heard in radio. In World War II he again served in the army, aiding troops in the use of FM radio. Plagued from his early inventing years onwards by legal battles with corporations over the rights to his inventions, Armstrong committed suicide in 1954. 

Two of Armstrong's three key inventions were made while he was at Columbia.  The audion tube came into being during his junior year at the School of Engineering; upon graduating in 1913, he filed for a patent and returned to Columbia as an instructor and assistant to Professor Michael I. Pupin, the pioneering electrical engineer. When he returned to Columbia after the war, he accepted no salary and devoted himself full-time to research to work on FM.  Armstrong received an honorary degree in 1929.  He was posthumously elected by the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva to the roster of electrical greats to stand beside Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, and Michael Pupin.

Read more about Armstrong in the Columbia Encyclopedia.


This seminar chronicles the life of Edwin Armstrong, the little-known but extraordinary inventor who patented the technology behind FM radio.
THE NEW DEAL
Armstrong championed inventions that made modern radio possible, says Columbia's Yannis Tsividis in Columbia Magazine's Living Legacies.

WKCR Back on Top
Columbia’s student radio station returns to the airwaves.


Write Columbia's History
Columbia's history, as seen by those who have studied, taught, and worked here.

Columbians Ahead of Their Time
From Margaret Mead and John Dewey to Mark Van Doren and Virginia Apgar, Columbians
CELEBRATED COLUMBIANS
have shaped culture and science over the last 250 years.

C250 Celebrates | C250 Perspectives | C250 Forum | C250 Events | C250 To Go |
Contact C250 | Privacy Policy | About This Web Site | © Copyright 2004 Columbia University