Edwin Armstrong

Edwin Armstrong (1890-1954), American inventor and electrical engineer who made fundamental contributions to the development of radio communication. Edwin Howard Armstrong was born in New York City and educated at Columbia University, where he became professor of electrical engineering in 1936. Armstrong developed several electronic circuits and systems that were crucial to the development of radio, including the regenerative circuit and the frequency modulation (FM) radio broadcasting system.

The regenerative circuit, which Armstrong developed in 1912, revolutionized wireless radio communication because it could amplify weak radio signals without distortion far more effectively than other radio receivers of that time. In the 1930s Armstrong developed the FM broadcasting system, which provided better sound quality and was more resistant to interference than the older amplitude modulation (AM) broadcasting system. Although FM broadcasting did not become available until after Armstrong's death, today FM broadcasting is widely used.