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In our era of digital streaming and podcasts, the humble radio might seem like a relic.
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Yet, the click of the dial, the search for a clear signal, and the discovery of a new song through the airwaves are experiences woven into our cultural fabric.
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This is especially true for FM radio, the technology that gifted us high-fidelity sound and revolutionized music broadcasting. Its history, however, is not a simple tale of progress.
It is a dramatic story of a brilliant, stubborn inventor, a fierce war with the established AM giants, and a technological triumph that was nearly silenced before it began.
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This is the history of FM radio.
Part 1: The Inventor and His Irritation with Static
Our story begins in the early 1930s. AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio was king. It was the dominant medium for news, entertainment, and President Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats.” But it had a fatal flaw: static.
AM works by varying the amplitude (power) of a carrier wave to encode a signal. Unfortunately, natural sources like lightning and electrical appliances also create amplitude variations, which the receiver picks up as crackles, pops, and hisses—a constant, irritating background noise.
Enter Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, tenacious, and already famous electrical engineer. He was a veteran of World War I and a pioneer in radio who had invented the regenerative circuit and the superheterodyne receiver, technologies that were foundational to all radio reception. But Armstrong was frustrated by AM’s limitations. He wasn’t just an engineer; he was a perfectionist obsessed with clarity and fidelity.
He dedicated himself to solving the static problem. Instead of varying the amplitude of the radio wave, he experimented with varying its frequency. In this system, the amplitude remains constant, and the audio signal is encoded by slightly shifting the wave’s frequency back and forth. Since static primarily affects amplitude, an FM receiver, designed to ignore amplitude changes, could effectively “cancel out” the noise, delivering a crystal-clear, static-free signal.
In 1933, Armstrong demonstrated his new “wide-band FM” system from a laboratory at Columbia University. He transmitted a recording of a musical piece and, in a stunning finale, poured water into a glass next to the microphone—a sound that would have been drowned in AM static. The listeners in the other room heard it with perfect clarity. It was a revelation.
Part 2: David vs. Goliath: The War with RCA
Armstrong’s invention was revolutionary, but it threatened a powerful establishment: the AM radio industry, led by the titan David Sarnoff and his company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
Sarnoff was a visionary in his own right, but he had a massive problem. RCA had just invested a fortune in developing and promoting television, and it was also deeply invested in its NBC radio networks, which were built on AM infrastructure. Armstrong’s FM was not just a better mousetrap; it was a potential obsolescence event for his entire empire.
Sarnoff initially seemed supportive, even inviting Armstrong to set up an FM transmitter atop the RCA-owned Empire State Building. Armstrong, believing he had a partner, poured more of his personal fortune into the project. However, Sarnoff’s intention was not to promote FM audio but to delay and control it. He saw FM’s higher frequencies as potentially useful for television audio and wanted to stifle FM as a competing service.
What followed was a brutal corporate and regulatory war. RCA launched a campaign to discredit FM, lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to rule against it. They argued the spectrum was needed for other purposes and that FM was not a significant advancement. Meanwhile, Armstrong, the stubborn inventor, refused to license his patents to RCA on unfair terms. He believed in his invention and fought back with lawsuits, draining his finances and spirit.
Part 3: A Phoenix from the Ashes: The Post-War FM Boom
Just as FM was gaining a foothold with a few independent stations, World War II erupted. The war froze all civilian electronics development. Yet, ironically, it saved FM technology. The military discovered that FM’s clarity and resistance to static were perfect for tank-to-tank and air-to-ground communications. The war effort necessitated the mass production of FM equipment, proving its reliability and driving down costs.
After the war, FM was poised for a comeback. Audiophiles and music lovers, tired of AM’s limited fidelity and noise, flocked to the new medium. The high-fidelity sound of FM was perfect for broadcasting the complex textures of jazz and the soon-to-explode genre of rock ‘n’ roll. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, FM grew steadily, becoming the home for classical music, album-oriented rock, and more experimental programming that didn’t fit AM’s top-40 format.
However, Armstrong would not live to see this triumph. Weary, bankrupted by legal fees, and despondent over the long battle with RCA, Edwin Howard Armstrong took his own life in 1954. His widow, Marion Armstrong, continued the legal fight and eventually won a series of settlements from RCA and other companies, finally securing the recognition and financial compensation her husband deserved.
Part 4: The Final Blow and Reinvention: Stereo and Beyond
Just as FM found its groove, it faced another challenge: television. The FCC, needing spectrum for new TV channels, made a catastrophic decision for FM: in 1945, it moved the FM band from its original home at 42-50 MHz to its current location, 88-108 MHz.
This move rendered every pre-war FM radio and transmitter obsolete overnight. It was a devastating blow that set FM adoption back by a decade. Stations and listeners had to reinvest entirely in new equipment.
The true salvation for FM came in 1961 with the FCC’s approval of stereophonic broadcasting. This was the killer app. FM, with its wide bandwidth and high fidelity, was the only medium capable of delivering rich, immersive stereo sound to the home. AM, with its narrow bandwidth, could not compete. This technological leap cemented FM’s dominance in music broadcasting. Throughout the 1970s, FM listenership finally surpassed AM, becoming the primary platform for music discovery.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Fidelity and Resilience
The history of FM radio is a classic American tale of innovation versus inertia, of a lone inventor challenging a corporate Goliath. It’s a story filled with tragedy, triumph, and incredible resilience.
From its birth in Armstrong’s lab to its role in shaping musical culture for over half a century, FM’s legacy is profound. It gave us the soundtrack of our lives in high fidelity. Today, while it faces new challenges from satellites and streaming algorithms, FM endures. It remains a free, local, and reliable source of news, emergency information, and music discovery—a testament to the brilliance of Edwin Armstrong and his relentless pursuit of perfect sound.
