Unfortunately, after loosing a number of battles in the courts with Sarnoff, Major Armstrong, now penniless, tragically ended his own life by stepping out of an eighth floor window and falling to his death.Ī personal recollection from museum founder and chairman John DeMajo: While DeForest, Armstrong and Sarnoff are all considered pioneers of modern radio, Armstrong held the distinction of having been the first inventor to bring his products to the finish line. This rivalry ensued after Armstrong refused to sell his patents to RCA. His life was spent in almost constant lawsuits with David Sarnoff of RCA, who seemed to be bent on Armstrong's destruction. Major Armstrong gave us many of radio's improvements and innovations such as FM reception and even early television technology. This improvement in receiver technology is really what enabled the purchase of home radios take off in the early years of the Great Depression. The receivers shown in this section of the museum employ Armstrong's Super-Hetrodyne technology.
The resulting sets only required one tuning dial, which simplified operation and made the receivers highly stable and dependable for home use. By the late '20s, Armstrong had come up with a more practical receiver which he called the "Super-hetrodyne." This system used a local oscillator beating against the incoming signal, which formed an intermediate or IF signal that could then be detected and amplified by additional stages. Most of the early 1920s radios employed this technology, many with multiple stages and an array of dials which made use and tuning difficult. Armstrong first designed the Super-Regenerative receiver which employed an amplified feedback scheme, using the Audion, to boost signals to the point where they could be easily heard on earphones, or amplified for use with a loud speaker.
Armstrong began to employ DeForest's discovery in the construction of practical radio receiving apparatus. This came to light when another inventor and engineer, Major Edwin W. Lee DeForest was credited with the discovery or invention of the vacuum tube, court testimony in later patent infringement cases determined that DeForest did not totally understand the operation of his own invention. In this gallery, we celebrate the Depression Era home radio, the one device responsible for keeping the sanity of a nation through almost two decades of financial despair and world turmoil. Through the programs that Radio brought into the home, every listener could learn from and identify with his neighbors in every corner of the nation. In studying the history of civilization in the United States, the Railroads are generally credited with having shaped the American landscape, but it was Radio that brought America together and formed the cultural bonds between Americans from all walks of life.
Radio melted down the cultural divides between geographic locations, and carried desperate folks through the worst depression in the Nation's history followed by the great "War to End All Wars." Through this relatively inexpensive home appliance, families in places such as rural West Virginia, could listen in on what was going on with their counter-parts in places like New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Detroit, and even foreign countries. Persons in rural areas were now isolated because of the cost of even short distance travel, so the new invention of the Radio, and its introduction into the home, seemed to be a cost-effective alternative to public places of entertainment.įor the typical American family of the early 1930s, a superhetrodyne radio receiver in the home brought in news of the world. Motion picture and supper club entertainment had became an unaffordable luxury for many. The onset of the Great Depression saw an end to many of the practices that individuals and families enjoyed in the prosperous 1920s. The Great Depression brought about a new interest in Radio in the home.