Iconoclast

INTRODUCTION

Doing What Can’t Be Done

JANUARY 31, 1954, WAS TO be a special day for Howard Armstrong. It marked the fortieth anniversary of sharing the results of his first great invention with his longtime friend, and president of RCA, David Sarnoff. More than any other person, Armstrong was responsible for the three basic technologies that make radio and television possible. In addition to his first discovery, called regeneration, which is the technique that allows radio signals to be amplified, Armstrong invented the superheterodyne receiver, which transforms high-frequency radio waves into audible sound waves. But his crowning achievement, and his ultimate undoing, was the creation of FM radio—a technology that the entire radio industry had ...