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Book Cover
E-book
Author Frost, Gary Lewis

Title Early FM radio : incremental technology in twentieth-century America / Gary L. Frost
Published Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

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Description 1 online resource (191 pages) : illustrations
Contents AM and FM radio before 1920 -- Congestion and frequency-modulation research, 1913-1933 -- RCA, Armstrong, and the acceleration of FM research, 1926-1933 -- The serendipitous discovery of staticless radio, 1915-1935 -- FM pioneers, RCA, and the reshaping of wideband FM radio, 1935-1940
Summary "The commonly accepted history of FM radio is one of the twentieth century's iconic sagas of invention, heroism, and tragedy. Edwin Howard Armstrong created a system of wideband frequency-modulation radio in 1933. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), convinced that Armstrong's system threatened its AM empire, failed to develop the new technology and refused to pay Armstrong royalties. Armstrong sued the company at great personal cost. He died despondent, exhausted, and broke." "But this account, according to Gary L. Frost, ignores the contributions of scores of other individuals who were involved in the decades-long struggle to realize the potential of FM radio. The first scholar to fully examine recently uncovered evidence from the Armstrong v. RCA lawsuit, Frost offers a thorough revision of the FM story." "Frost's balanced, contextualized approach provides a much-needed corrective to previous accounts. Navigating deftly through the details of a complicated story, he examines the motivations and interactions of the three communities most intimately involved in the development of the technology - Progressive-era amateur radio operators, RCA and Westinghouse engineers, and early FM broadcasters. In the process, Frost demonstrates the tension between competition and collaboration that goes hand in hand with the emergence and refinement of new technologies." "Frost's study reconsiders both the social construction of FM radio and the process of technological evolution. Historians of technology, communication, and media will welcome this important reexamination of the canonic story of early FM radio."--Jacket
Notes OldControl:muse9780801899133
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Radio frequency modulation -- Transmitters and transmission -- History
Radio frequency modulation -- Transmitters and transmission
Genre/Form dictionaries.
History
Dictionaries.
Dictionnaires.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780801899133
0801899133