Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

THE ARMSTRONG PATENT How an Undergraduate at Columbia University Discovered One of the Most Important Instrumentalities in the Radio World M .Jo R. EDWIN H. ARMSTRONG has been 'confirmed by the United States District Court of Appeals as the inventor of an instrumentality which has been referred to as "one of the most important inventions, if not the most important, in the wireless art." By a striking coincidence the decision comes in the midst of the development of a great public interest in a service made possible by the invention. Mr. Armstrong is a young man and was a student at Columbia while he was perfecting his revolutionary method. The instrumentality is the Armstrong feed-back circuit, the invention which makes possible the amplification of incoming radio waves, and lacking which neither long distance radio telephone communication nor radio telephone broadcasting would be possible. The Court of Appeals thus upholds the de cision handed down a year ago by Federal Judge Julius Mayer in the long fight between young Armstrong and Dr. Lee de Forest and the De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company. The decision of the court, which is final, means that no long distance telephone communication, no nightly broadcasting programme can be carried out without using the Armstrong patent. Even the modern multiplex forms of wired telegraphy and telephony must use the methods. The story of Armstrong's struggle for recognition has well been called one of the most romantic incidents of scientific achievement. He began his experiments with radio as a boy of fifteen. Before and during his student days at Columbia he became a close student of the fundamental action of the audion and read all the literature available on the subject. THE ORIGINAL DRAWING OF THE FEED-BACK CIRCUIT WHICH LARGELY DETERMINED THE COURT IN ARMSTRONG'S FAVOR 1 r^""''y""l L3