KLUB@maristb.bitnet (Richard Budd) (03/01/91)
Donald E. Kimberlin <0004133373@mcimail.com>writes in TELECOM Digest V11 #156: > It was (retired) Major E. H. Armstrong (to whom > we owe credit for the superheterodyne receiver that made broadcast > radio really a practical medium for the general public) who in 1935 > aired the first broadcast FM transmissions in 1935, from a transmitter > atop the Empire State Building to receivers in New Jersey. (Sorry, > Chicago.) Both CBS at New York and Zenith at Chicago were early > promoters of FM broadcasting. And the Moderator asked: > Was the station in New York on the air continuously on a regular > schedule in the 1935 => 1941 period? Zenith's claim was they were the > first on the air with regularly scheduled, commercial programming on > the FM band. I now have the 1943 book on the development of radio and television in front of me and it confirms that WEFM in Chicago in the autumn of 1941 was the first FM station with regularly scheduled programming. By January, 1942, there were twenty-nine in the United States. Donald Kimberlin's article just about covers everything about the early days of FM Radio. A couple of side-notes. Major Armstrong's demonstra- tion of FM Radio took place from the Empire State Building in December, 1933. However, RCA decided to pursue their research in television and they dropped their support of Armstrong's project. The impetus for FM Radio came five years later when Armstrong developed an experimental FM transmitter not far from Boston, Massachusetts for the Yankee Radio Network. It permitted FM programming from Boston to be relayed tothe 22 stations and affiliates of Yankee throughout the Northeast. That development produced a demand for FM radio sets and encouraged Zenith to launch their FM station in Chicago. Paging through the book, I discovered something that IMHO the news services might have missed during General Electric's takeover of RCA in 1988. GE actually created RCA in 1919 when the federal government urged GE to purchase the American branch of Marconi for national security reasons. In 1927 however, the FCC ordered GE to divest itself of RCA or else face an antitrust suit from the Justice Department. I believe the courts never ruled on the antitrust implications of RCA being part of GE, since such a ruling would have prohibited GE from making any offer for RCA in 1988! BTW GE's role in RCA was acknowledged by NBC in their station ID ID chimes <G> <E> <C> (for General Electric Company). Richard Budd | E-Mail: IBMers - rcbudd@rhqvm19.ibm VM Systems Programmer | All Others- klub@maristb.bitnet IBM - Sterling Forest, NY | Phone: (914) 578-3746
dion@oakhill.sps.mot.com (Dion Messer) (03/03/91)
On the subject of Major Armstrong, my favorite communications book has "A Historical Note" on Armstrong. The book is titled "Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems", by B. P. Lathi. It does confirm that he committed suicide in 1954 by walking out a window on the 13th floor of a building. The pages to look at are 301 and 302, and the note is quite interesting.