One of the most enduring myths in America is that of the rugged individualist, the lone man or woman with a good idea or noble cause who triumphs because our system of free enterprise recognizes and rewards such behavior. It stems from the days of the early pioneers, when independent-minded men and women were needed to wrest control of the Western Hemisphere from those who already lived here. The lure of forging one’s own destiny was an effective way for European governments to put troublemakers to profitable use, and it was fun while it lasted, but the same rugged individualists who brought civilization to the wilderness quickly discovered that civilization, once established, had little tolerance for rugged individualists. Those who continued to act independently often found themselves in jail or dangling by the neck from a tree.

Edwin Howard Armstrong was a nobody from Yonkers, New York, who believed the myth. He showed promise at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and was fortunate in having a professor who gave him the time to pursue his inventions. It paid off generously, for Armstrong turned out to be a genius at electrical engineering. Working alone, sometimes in the attic of his parents’ home, he invented the feedback circuit in 1912 and the superheterodyne in 1918, which brought wireless communication out of the Dark Ages of Morse code and into the living room of nearly every American.

...Unknown to Armstrong, RCA had been frantically developing its own FM system once it became apparent that Armstrong wasn’t going away. Unable to destroy FM by attacking or ignoring it, RCA now wanted to minimize FM’s impact by co-opting it.

Sarnoff sought the last refuge of the rich and powerful—he tried to buy Armstrong with a deal. In the fall of 1940 he personally offered Armstrong’s attorneys a cash payment of $1 million. Sarnoff wanted three things for his money: all of FM’s profits, all of its control, and the scientific credit for its invention.

In Sarnoff’s fantasy world, Armstrong would license his FM patents to RCA free of all royalties. Armstrong would look the other way while RCA claimed that FM was the invention of RCA engineers. He would cooperate in putting FM on the air at low power and with cheap receivers, which not coincidentally would lessen its superiority to AM. And he would allow Sarnoff to mold FM into a network subsidiary, ensuring that it would never become a threat to RCA or to any other member of the communications elite.

Armstrong was livid. His goals were non-material and had nothing to do with maintaining the status quo. He wanted to be recognized as the sole inventor of FM. He wanted the best possible FM on the airwaves. And he wanted FM free and available to everyone, whether they wanted to operate a small local station or the biggest, most powerful radio network imaginable.

Armstrong flatly rejected Sarnoff’s million-dollar offer, to the astonishment of RCA management. “What more does he want?” one dumbfounded executive asked, unable to fathom a man who valued principles more than money.

Get the full article in the print edition of Barracuda #7