Edwin Armstrong was a ground breaking electrical engineer and the inventor of the Regenerative Circuit (1912), the Superheterodyne Circuit (1918), the Super Regenerative Circuit (1922), the complete FM System (1933), and is considered the father of FM radio. He was born in New York City on December 18, 1890. Inspired by Guglielmo Marconi in his early teens, Edwin found his passion in mechanics and radio transmissions.

As an engineering student at Columbia University, Edwin devised a regenerative (feedback) circuit that improved signals with a thousandfold amplification. Through this, Edwin found that the tube’s circuit shifted from being a receiver to being an oscillator of wireless waves. This circuit was widely used in WWII and is still used in many low data applications today. Later this discovery went through exhaustive legal challenges from Lee De Forest all the way to the Supreme Court. De Forest won the patent battle, but the Institute of Radio Engineers (now the IEEE) refused to rescind a gold-medal awarded to Edwin for his discovery of the feedback circuit. Later Edwin received the Franklin Medal, the highest US scientific honor, acknowledging his invention of the regenerative circuit.

While serving in the Army Signal Corps laboratories in Paris during World War I, Edwin invented the superheterodyne circuit, a highly selective means of mixing the signals of two different frequencies to produce a signal of a third frequency. Today this is the approach used in most radio, radar, television and cellular communications. Edwin then returned to Columbia University, working under Mihajlo (Michael) Pupin, the notable Serbian physicist and inventor. He sold many of his patents to corporations, including most notably RCA, for large sums of cash and stock, achieving great wealth.

In 1933, Edwin held patents on advanced circuits for a new static-free radio system which varied the number of waves per second over a wide band of frequencies. This frequency modulation (FM) made possible the first static free, practical method of high-fidelity broadcast radio. Since this new system required changes in transmitters and receivers, it took a while to be embraced. To prove its worth, Edwin then built the first full-scale FM station himself in 1939, costing more than $300,000. He continued to develop and promote the system, found its usefulness during WWII (continuous-wave FM radar), and fended off postwar regulatory attempts to cripple FM’s growth. FM slowly established itself, and Edwin again, fought another patent battle (primarily with RCA) to retain his invention. In 1954 while discouraged and ailing mentally, and with most of his wealth gone in the battle for FM, Edwin took his own life at age 63.  During his life he held 46 patents. After his death, his widow Marion oversaw successful litigation and settlements to have five additional patents credited to her husband, finally establishing Edwin as the inventor of FM.

Over the years the technology, television, radio and broadcasting communities have acknowledged Edwin’s sizeable contributions to wireless and his numerous inventions. Posthumously, the International Telecommunications Union listed Edwin in the legion of electrical greats that included his childhood inspiration, Guglielmo Marconi. A US Postage Stamp was released in his honor as an American inventor in 1983. He was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1980, the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame in 2000, and the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2001. Philosophy Hall, the Columbia building where Armstrong developed FM, was declared a National Historic Landmark. Since 1937, the Radio Club of America has awarded its highest honor – the Armstrong Medal, recognizing individuals for outstanding achievements in wireless and radio communications.