ARMSTRONG'S INVOLVEMENT IN PROJECT DIANA
Note: The following account was written by Cindy Stodola Pomerleau, based in part on an oral history interview she conducted with her father, E. King Stodola, in 1979.
E(dwin) Howard Armstrong (1890-1954) invented the regenerative circuit (in 1912, while he was a Columbia University undergraduate), the superheterodyne receiver (in 1918), and frequency modulation (FM) radio (in 1933) – accomplishments that, taken together, made possible modern communication by introducing noise-free, high-fidelity audio and providing circuitry fundamental to nearly all radios, TVs, and cell phones in use today. He was truly a giant in his field. Sadly, he was also a tragic figure, becoming embroiled first with radio pioneer Lee De Forest and later with media magnate David Sarnoff in legal battles that undermined his health, drained his personal fortune, and diverted an enormous amount of time that could have been put to more productive use. In the end, penniless and in despair, he removed the air conditioner from the window of his 13th floor apartment, donned his overcoat, hat, and gloves, and jumped to his death. He was 63.
The general consensus today is that Armstrong’s claims to preeminence were justified, and that he was defeated by the superior resources of the large corporations aligned against him, inadequate understanding of the issues by the courts, and perhaps to some extent by his refusal to consider settlement offers that fell short of what he felt he deserved. He won some cases over the years, he lost many more. He never gave up.
In 1906, Lee De Forest invented the Audion, a three-electrode vacuum tube that could amplify weak electrical signals, transforming the longtime dream of radio broadcasting, television, and other forms of long-distance communication into a real-world possibility. De Forest aggressively promoted the capabilities and the promise of his new invention -- in 1908, by demonstrating its ability to broadcast from the Eiffel Tower; and in 1910, by broadcasting the first-ever “Live from the Met” show starring Enrico Caruso (a feat somewhat diminished by the fact that it could only be heard via public receivers set up for the purpose, since no one yet had a radio). Disappointingly, it didn’t generate as much excitement as De Forest had hoped. Why? Apparently because the Audion didn’t really work all that well. The world did not build a path to De Forest’s door because he had not built a better mousetrap.
De Forest’s analysis of how his own invention worked didn’t make much sense to Armstrong. In 1912, after pondering the problem at length, he invented the regenerative circuit, which massively improved the ability of De Forest’s vacuum tube by using positive feedback to amplify the signal, earning him the nickname “Feedback” Armstrong. In effect, Armstrong’s invention saved the Audion by making it practical for its intended use.
De Forest did not see it that way. He saw it as patent infringement, claiming that he had had the idea for the regenerative circuit before Armstrong tried to patent it, and that therefore the regenerative circuit was not eligible to be patented by Armstrong because it was already covered under De Forest’s Audion patents. In 1914 he launched a series of patent wars to defend his claim. Although the courts initially sided with Armstrong, De Forest appealed, and the conflict turned into an epic struggle involving not only the two principals but also AT&T and RCA, a formidable pair of industry giants that had acquired rights to De Forest’s patents including the Audion patents. Over time they managed to beat Armstrong back.
Meanwhile, a new player stepped onstage in 1921 when another enterprising Columbia student, a German named Charles M. Srebroff, founded Radio Engineering Laboratories (REL), a small Brooklyn company that specialized in radio kits. RCA and AT&T filed suit against REL for using the regenerative circuit in its kits, an invention to which these industry giants owned the rights by virtue of having purchased De Forest’s patents. Armstrong, realizing that REL could potentially serve as a catalyst for revitalizing his patent litigation, purchased a 51% stake in REL in 1931, becoming its controlling owner.
Sadly for Armstrong, the REL gambit and his attempts at relitigation ultimately failed. In 1934, the Supreme Court ruled against him, citing a 1912 entry in De Forest’s lab notebook appearing to indicate that he had conceived the core idea of feedback prior to Armstrong’s invention of the regenerative circuit, even though De Forest had done nothing to develop or patent the idea at the time. Armstrong was so dispirited that he tried to turn in his Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) Medal of Honor. But the IRE refused, affirming the widespread acceptance of Armstrong’s primacy within the scientific community.
The years following the Supreme Court ruling were a time of transition for Armstrong. After his definitive defeat in 1934, he turned his attention to developing, refining, and commercializing his groundbreaking Frequency Modulation (FM) technology. He received experimental authorization to begin work on his new FM station in Alpine, New Jersey in 1936 and made his first experimental broadcasts in 1938. Under his leadership, REL became the primary manufacturer of high-quality FM transmitting and receiving equipment, which was essential for proving the commercial viability of his wide-band FM system in the late 1930s and 1940s.
At the same time, he took steps to shore up Radio Engineering Laboratories, in which he maintained a controlling interest until his death. He personally covered the legal expenses incurred by REL in the unsuccessful attempt to defend his patents. He also maintained a financial and emotional commitment to maintaining the viability of his earlier inventions, which he did by creating a market for them overseas.
In 1936, a young engineer named E(dwin) King Stodola (1914-1992), the ink on his Cooper Union diploma scarcely dry, was sent by an employment agency to apply for a job at REL. (Full disclosure: King Stodola was my father, and the information that follows comes largely from an oral history interview I conducted with him in 1979.) Jobs in his field were in short supply at the time; REL had no openings for engineers, but impressed with his background as a ham radio operator, they hired him as a wireman. It soon became apparent that his rather modest wiring skills were outshone by three less common abilities that made him a valuable employee: First, his grasp of logic and facility with the English language meant that when he wrote the user’s manual for a new product, there were no errors in the connections or the wiring diagrams. When the product was plugged in for testing, it worked correctly the first time. Second, he was a sociable man who loved drawing people out of their shells and coaxing their life stories from them. Third, as a newly minted graduate of Cooper Union, he was the only licensed engineer on staff, and bowing to the inevitable, REL reclassified him to the status of engineer.
“Because I really had more real engineering knowledge than anybody there,” he told me, “I got coming my way all the interesting jobs.” And among the most interesting assignments that came his way was undoubtedly the chance to work closely with Howard Armstrong, already one of his heroes. For his part, Armstrong must have welcomed the arrival of a new employee who was academically and intellectually qualified to become a partner in his new projects. “He had had all of his frequency modulation equipment built by Radio Engineering Laboratories,” said my father, “and I got to know him fairly well in that connection.” Over the course of their collaboration, FM radio transitioned from experimental demonstrations to practical broadcasting, with REL serving as a key manufacturer and supporter.
Stodola had also demonstrated an ability to prepare accurate and easy-to-follow instructions for the use of equipment, a skill that would prove particularly valuable in dealing with overseas customers with potentially limited English skills. “It turned out I was able to solve some very troublesome situations that they got into,” he said, “because these sets were all designed on paper.” By the time my father was finished, no bugs remained unfixed.
The importance of the foreign market cannot be fully understood without reference to the patent wars. As my father explained, several companies were building equipment under the Armstrong patents, but RCA had hand-picked Radio Engineering Laboratories as their target, “I guess partly because it was a relatively small company that was not involved in lots of different things…[so it] would make a real clean case.” Once RCA prevailed, Radio Engineering Laboratories could no longer use the Armstrong patents, and RCA would not license anyone else to use the De Forest patents, so REL was forced to find another tube configuration that was not covered by either RCA’s or Armstrong’s patents. The one they identified was “quite unsatisfactory,” according to my father, “but it would work.” Moreover, swapping out the new circuitry for the one REL was no longer legally allowed to use in the manufacturing process was only a matter of changing a few connections. Overseas customers were not constrained by US patent law; consequently, once the equipment was in service, it miraculously worked very well!
As to exactly how REL managed to effect the needed “repairs,” my father maintained radio silence: “I never went out on any of the expeditions to install them and fix them.”
In 1939, Armstrong and Stodola were set to go their separate ways – Stodola to a new and better-paying job as a radio operator with WNYC in New York City, Armstrong to continue pursuing his obsession with his new FM radio station, W2XMN. A ceremonial occasion, however, brought them together one last time: “When the time came to open his first commercial frequency modulation broadcasting station up in Alpine, New Jersey,” said my father, “they had to have somebody who had a proper license to be the operator for the first day’s operation, and I was it. And so I went up there and went through the formalities of signing the log. I really didn’t do much, he did everything as far as running it was concerned. But I gave it the legal requirement, and he paid me a handsome $25 for my work. And I tell you, I wish I’d kept the check instead of cashing it, because it would be a souvenir I would value very highly.”
As it turned out, this was not the end of their relationship after all. Unexpectedly, fate brought them together again in 1945-46, this time to collaborate on Project Diana, the first successful attempt to bounce radio waves off the moon. The Project was carried out by the Army Signal Corps at Camp Evans in Belmar, New Jersey, with Stodola serving as Chief Scientist, under the leadership of Col Jack DeWitt, Director of Camp Evans. For reasons of both speed and economy, Project Diana was famously carried out with equipment already on hand, and one of the devices they inherited was a narrow-band receiver built by Armstrong. According to DeWitt, the receiver was a thousand times more sensitive than anything in current use. It would need considerable modification, however, to enable it to receive signals returning from the moon.
That this receiver built by Armstrong was crucial to the success of Project Diana is not in dispute, but history is surprisingly coy on the nature and extent of Armstrong’s involvement with Project Diana. We know he maintained a duplicate setup of the Camp Evans equipment at his own lab in Alpine, New Jersey, just a couple of hours from Belmar, even without benefit of the not-yet-built Garden State Parkway. (The SCR-271 radar tower, minus the actual antenna, remains on the site to this day.) But did he ever actually make that journey? Did he ever roll up his sleeves and work directly alongside DeWitt and his team?
One of Armstrong’s employees in the Alpine lab at the time, Renville McMann, later stated that the staff was strictly forbidden from pointing their radar at the moon, in order to avoid any possibility, however remote, of “scooping” the Army--suggesting to him that Armstrong might have adopted a policy of deliberately keeping Project Diana at arm’s length to avoid deflecting credit from their work.
The discovery that Armstrong already had a close working relationship with King Stodola, dating back to their years at REL, caused me to rethink this conclusion. With all due respect to McMann, anyone who knew my father knew how outgoing he was, and how retentive he was of his relationships. So it seems likely to me that he brokered DeWitt’s initial choice of Armstrong’s equipment for the project, and it is impossible to imagine that he wouldn’t have persuaded Armstrong to spend time in Belmar meeting directly with the members of the team. My father was a very persuasive man.
E(dwin) Howard Armstrong (1890-1954) invented the regenerative circuit (in 1912, while he was a Columbia University undergraduate), the superheterodyne receiver (in 1918), and frequency modulation (FM) radio (in 1933) – accomplishments that, taken together, made possible modern communication by introducing noise-free, high-fidelity audio and providing circuitry fundamental to nearly all radios, TVs, and cell phones in use today. He was truly a giant in his field. Sadly, he was also a tragic figure, becoming embroiled first with radio pioneer Lee De Forest and later with media magnate David Sarnoff in legal battles that undermined his health, drained his personal fortune, and diverted an enormous amount of time that could have been put to more productive use. In the end, penniless and in despair, he removed the air conditioner from the window of his 13th floor apartment, donned his overcoat, hat, and gloves, and jumped to his death. He was 63.
The general consensus today is that Armstrong’s claims to preeminence were justified, and that he was defeated by the superior resources of the large corporations aligned against him, inadequate understanding of the issues by the courts, and perhaps to some extent by his refusal to consider settlement offers that fell short of what he felt he deserved. He won some cases over the years, he lost many more. He never gave up.
In 1906, Lee De Forest invented the Audion, a three-electrode vacuum tube that could amplify weak electrical signals, transforming the longtime dream of radio broadcasting, television, and other forms of long-distance communication into a real-world possibility. De Forest aggressively promoted the capabilities and the promise of his new invention -- in 1908, by demonstrating its ability to broadcast from the Eiffel Tower; and in 1910, by broadcasting the first-ever “Live from the Met” show starring Enrico Caruso (a feat somewhat diminished by the fact that it could only be heard via public receivers set up for the purpose, since no one yet had a radio). Disappointingly, it didn’t generate as much excitement as De Forest had hoped. Why? Apparently because the Audion didn’t really work all that well. The world did not build a path to De Forest’s door because he had not built a better mousetrap.
De Forest’s analysis of how his own invention worked didn’t make much sense to Armstrong. In 1912, after pondering the problem at length, he invented the regenerative circuit, which massively improved the ability of De Forest’s vacuum tube by using positive feedback to amplify the signal, earning him the nickname “Feedback” Armstrong. In effect, Armstrong’s invention saved the Audion by making it practical for its intended use.
De Forest did not see it that way. He saw it as patent infringement, claiming that he had had the idea for the regenerative circuit before Armstrong tried to patent it, and that therefore the regenerative circuit was not eligible to be patented by Armstrong because it was already covered under De Forest’s Audion patents. In 1914 he launched a series of patent wars to defend his claim. Although the courts initially sided with Armstrong, De Forest appealed, and the conflict turned into an epic struggle involving not only the two principals but also AT&T and RCA, a formidable pair of industry giants that had acquired rights to De Forest’s patents including the Audion patents. Over time they managed to beat Armstrong back.
Meanwhile, a new player stepped onstage in 1921 when another enterprising Columbia student, a German named Charles M. Srebroff, founded Radio Engineering Laboratories (REL), a small Brooklyn company that specialized in radio kits. RCA and AT&T filed suit against REL for using the regenerative circuit in its kits, an invention to which these industry giants owned the rights by virtue of having purchased De Forest’s patents. Armstrong, realizing that REL could potentially serve as a catalyst for revitalizing his patent litigation, purchased a 51% stake in REL in 1931, becoming its controlling owner.
Sadly for Armstrong, the REL gambit and his attempts at relitigation ultimately failed. In 1934, the Supreme Court ruled against him, citing a 1912 entry in De Forest’s lab notebook appearing to indicate that he had conceived the core idea of feedback prior to Armstrong’s invention of the regenerative circuit, even though De Forest had done nothing to develop or patent the idea at the time. Armstrong was so dispirited that he tried to turn in his Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) Medal of Honor. But the IRE refused, affirming the widespread acceptance of Armstrong’s primacy within the scientific community.
The years following the Supreme Court ruling were a time of transition for Armstrong. After his definitive defeat in 1934, he turned his attention to developing, refining, and commercializing his groundbreaking Frequency Modulation (FM) technology. He received experimental authorization to begin work on his new FM station in Alpine, New Jersey in 1936 and made his first experimental broadcasts in 1938. Under his leadership, REL became the primary manufacturer of high-quality FM transmitting and receiving equipment, which was essential for proving the commercial viability of his wide-band FM system in the late 1930s and 1940s.
At the same time, he took steps to shore up Radio Engineering Laboratories, in which he maintained a controlling interest until his death. He personally covered the legal expenses incurred by REL in the unsuccessful attempt to defend his patents. He also maintained a financial and emotional commitment to maintaining the viability of his earlier inventions, which he did by creating a market for them overseas.
In 1936, a young engineer named E(dwin) King Stodola (1914-1992), the ink on his Cooper Union diploma scarcely dry, was sent by an employment agency to apply for a job at REL. (Full disclosure: King Stodola was my father, and the information that follows comes largely from an oral history interview I conducted with him in 1979.) Jobs in his field were in short supply at the time; REL had no openings for engineers, but impressed with his background as a ham radio operator, they hired him as a wireman. It soon became apparent that his rather modest wiring skills were outshone by three less common abilities that made him a valuable employee: First, his grasp of logic and facility with the English language meant that when he wrote the user’s manual for a new product, there were no errors in the connections or the wiring diagrams. When the product was plugged in for testing, it worked correctly the first time. Second, he was a sociable man who loved drawing people out of their shells and coaxing their life stories from them. Third, as a newly minted graduate of Cooper Union, he was the only licensed engineer on staff, and bowing to the inevitable, REL reclassified him to the status of engineer.
“Because I really had more real engineering knowledge than anybody there,” he told me, “I got coming my way all the interesting jobs.” And among the most interesting assignments that came his way was undoubtedly the chance to work closely with Howard Armstrong, already one of his heroes. For his part, Armstrong must have welcomed the arrival of a new employee who was academically and intellectually qualified to become a partner in his new projects. “He had had all of his frequency modulation equipment built by Radio Engineering Laboratories,” said my father, “and I got to know him fairly well in that connection.” Over the course of their collaboration, FM radio transitioned from experimental demonstrations to practical broadcasting, with REL serving as a key manufacturer and supporter.
Stodola had also demonstrated an ability to prepare accurate and easy-to-follow instructions for the use of equipment, a skill that would prove particularly valuable in dealing with overseas customers with potentially limited English skills. “It turned out I was able to solve some very troublesome situations that they got into,” he said, “because these sets were all designed on paper.” By the time my father was finished, no bugs remained unfixed.
The importance of the foreign market cannot be fully understood without reference to the patent wars. As my father explained, several companies were building equipment under the Armstrong patents, but RCA had hand-picked Radio Engineering Laboratories as their target, “I guess partly because it was a relatively small company that was not involved in lots of different things…[so it] would make a real clean case.” Once RCA prevailed, Radio Engineering Laboratories could no longer use the Armstrong patents, and RCA would not license anyone else to use the De Forest patents, so REL was forced to find another tube configuration that was not covered by either RCA’s or Armstrong’s patents. The one they identified was “quite unsatisfactory,” according to my father, “but it would work.” Moreover, swapping out the new circuitry for the one REL was no longer legally allowed to use in the manufacturing process was only a matter of changing a few connections. Overseas customers were not constrained by US patent law; consequently, once the equipment was in service, it miraculously worked very well!
As to exactly how REL managed to effect the needed “repairs,” my father maintained radio silence: “I never went out on any of the expeditions to install them and fix them.”
In 1939, Armstrong and Stodola were set to go their separate ways – Stodola to a new and better-paying job as a radio operator with WNYC in New York City, Armstrong to continue pursuing his obsession with his new FM radio station, W2XMN. A ceremonial occasion, however, brought them together one last time: “When the time came to open his first commercial frequency modulation broadcasting station up in Alpine, New Jersey,” said my father, “they had to have somebody who had a proper license to be the operator for the first day’s operation, and I was it. And so I went up there and went through the formalities of signing the log. I really didn’t do much, he did everything as far as running it was concerned. But I gave it the legal requirement, and he paid me a handsome $25 for my work. And I tell you, I wish I’d kept the check instead of cashing it, because it would be a souvenir I would value very highly.”
As it turned out, this was not the end of their relationship after all. Unexpectedly, fate brought them together again in 1945-46, this time to collaborate on Project Diana, the first successful attempt to bounce radio waves off the moon. The Project was carried out by the Army Signal Corps at Camp Evans in Belmar, New Jersey, with Stodola serving as Chief Scientist, under the leadership of Col Jack DeWitt, Director of Camp Evans. For reasons of both speed and economy, Project Diana was famously carried out with equipment already on hand, and one of the devices they inherited was a narrow-band receiver built by Armstrong. According to DeWitt, the receiver was a thousand times more sensitive than anything in current use. It would need considerable modification, however, to enable it to receive signals returning from the moon.
That this receiver built by Armstrong was crucial to the success of Project Diana is not in dispute, but history is surprisingly coy on the nature and extent of Armstrong’s involvement with Project Diana. We know he maintained a duplicate setup of the Camp Evans equipment at his own lab in Alpine, New Jersey, just a couple of hours from Belmar, even without benefit of the not-yet-built Garden State Parkway. (The SCR-271 radar tower, minus the actual antenna, remains on the site to this day.) But did he ever actually make that journey? Did he ever roll up his sleeves and work directly alongside DeWitt and his team?
One of Armstrong’s employees in the Alpine lab at the time, Renville McMann, later stated that the staff was strictly forbidden from pointing their radar at the moon, in order to avoid any possibility, however remote, of “scooping” the Army--suggesting to him that Armstrong might have adopted a policy of deliberately keeping Project Diana at arm’s length to avoid deflecting credit from their work.
The discovery that Armstrong already had a close working relationship with King Stodola, dating back to their years at REL, caused me to rethink this conclusion. With all due respect to McMann, anyone who knew my father knew how outgoing he was, and how retentive he was of his relationships. So it seems likely to me that he brokered DeWitt’s initial choice of Armstrong’s equipment for the project, and it is impossible to imagine that he wouldn’t have persuaded Armstrong to spend time in Belmar meeting directly with the members of the team. My father was a very persuasive man.