Man of High Fidelity:
`EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG
`
`A Biography –
`By Lawrence Lessing
`With a new forward by the author
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`Page iii
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`Pratt DISCLAIMER
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`
`This PDF COPY is for use at Pratt Institute for Educational Purposes Only
`
`I affirm that sufficient print copies of the original Bantam Book Paperback are in stock in
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`HOWEVER, due to the fact that the 1969 text is no longer in publication, complicated by the
`fact that these copies are forty-four (44) years old and in a very fragile condition, this PDF
`version of the text was created for student use in the Department of Mathematics and Science.
`
`- Professor Charles Rubenstein, January 2013
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`APPLE 1014
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
`EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG
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`Was the last – and perhaps the least known – of the great American Inventors. Without his major
`contributions, the broadcasting industry would not be what it is today, and there would be no FM radio.
`But in time of mushrooming industry and mammoth corporations, the recognition of individual genius is
`often refused, and always minimized.
`
`This is the extraordinary true story of the discovery of high fidelity, the brilliant man and his devoted wife
`who battled against tremendous odds to have it adopted, and their long fight against the corporations that
`challenged their right to the credit and rewards. Mrs. Armstrong finally ensured that right nearly ten years
`after her husband’s death.
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`Page i
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`Cataloging Information Page
`
`This low-priced Bantam Book
`has been completely reset in a type face
`designed for easy reading, and was printed
`from new plates. It contains the complete
`text of the original hard-cover edition.
`NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
`
`(bantam logo here)
`
`MAN OF HIGH FIDELITY
`A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
`J. B. Lippincott Company
`
`PRINTING HISTORY
`Lippincott edition published November 1956
`Bantam edition published Match 1969
`
`All rights reserved.
`Copyright © 1956, 1969 by Lawrence Lessing.
`No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by
`Mimeograph or other means, without permission.
`For information address: J. B. Lippincott Company,
`East Washington Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 10105.
`Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
`Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a subsidiary
`of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words
`“Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the
`United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.
`Bantam Books, Inc., 271 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
`PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
`
`
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`(Dedication Page)
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`To Yvonne
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`Page v
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`Contents
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`EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG
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`Inside Cover
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`Pratt PDF Disclaimer
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`Cataloging info page
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`Dedication
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`Contents
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`Foreword
`Preface to First Edition
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`1
`The Attic Inventor
`2
`A Child in the Nineties
`3
`The Boy Wireless Operator
`4
`The Undergraduate Genius
`5
`The Inventive Act
`6
`"Feedback" Armstrong
`7
`The Signal Corps Major
`8
`The Superheterodyne Feat
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`The Progress of Radio - Schematics
`9
`Young Man of the Twenties
`10 Armstrong vs. de Forest
`The FM Comeback
`11
`12
`The Defender of the Human Ear
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`The Second War
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`The Last Battle
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`The Expense of Greatness
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`Final Vindication
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`Bibliography
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`Foreword
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`One of the extraordinary but not widely known tales of American invention is the story of
`FM or frequency-modulation radio. No major invention of recent times has had a longer, harder,
`more heroic struggle for existence than this system of high-fidelity broadcasting. Today, some
`thirty-five years after its conception, FM finally has won legal and historical vindication of such
`magnitude as to lay to rest any doubts as to its authenticity and great worth. This is a fitting
`occasion, therefore, for reissuing this life of the inventor, which was first published shortly after
`his despairing death by suicide in 1954, and which is now brought triumphantly up to date.
`
`
`FM was conceived about 1933 by Edwin Howard Armstrong, a noted professor of
`engineering at Columbia University and a recognized genius in electronic circuitry. He had
`contributed to early radio two basic circuits, the regenerative or feedback circuit and the
`superheterodyne, which are' still at the heart of nearly all modem radio-television transmitters
`and receivers. When he sought permission in 1935, however, to erect an experimental FM station
`to demonstrate the unusual qualities of his new radio system, he ran into a stone wall. The
`Federal Communications Commission dismissed FM out of hand as "a visionary development,"
`arid denied him a permit. The standard radio networks operating on AM or amplitude
`modulation were equally indifferent. "Who needs a second method of broadcasting?" they said. It
`took Armstrong nearly five years to get his experimental station constructed, after threatening to
`take his invention to a foreign country. Though FM proved to be as remarkable a new system of
`broadcasting as its inventor claimed, still, for nearly another quarter of a century, it was blocked
`by one regulatory device or another from reaching its free, full throated development. The full
`story is here.
`
`
`What sustained FM through these years of commercial opposition and regulatory
`complicity was the fact that it was indeed a superior system of broadcasting, aurally and
`technically, to all who had ears to hear. The most striking demonstration, then as now, was to
`hear an FM program coming in crystal clear through a clatter of thunderstorms and electrical
`disturbances that turned ordinary radio reception into a nightmare of shattering discharges and
`steady background noise like frying eggs. In addition to its noise-suppression qualities, the wide-
`swinging FM wave also was capable of carrying the full frequency range of sound perceptible to
`the human ear, giving it a depth and naturalness unknown to ordinary AM radio. Over the years,
`these qualities attracted a constantly growing band of discriminating listeners and dedicated FM
`broadcasters, the most persevering of which came to form the National Association of FM
`Broadcasters to promote FM's independent development.
`
`
`By 1960-tragically too late for the inventor to witness it - the tide began to turn for FM.
`For one thing, the FCC began to right some of the inequities. In 1961 it authorized the use of a
`split-band system of stereophonic broadcasting over FM channels, a technique whose underlying
`feasibility Armstrong had demonstrated in an historic multiplexing experiment as early as 1934.
`It further enhances FM's superior sound. This development, plus normal cumulative growth, has
`pushed FM to new heights. Some fifty million radio sets equipped with FM are now in use in the
`U.S., and this number is expected soon to exceed those with AM reception only. The number of
`FM stations on the air now reaches some 1,700, offering a wide range of programs, and their sale
`price steadily rises, indicating a marked economic change for the better. The fact is that FM was
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`technically ready and waiting to further the current revolution in stereophonic disc and tape
`recording and in sophisticated listening.
`
`
`Meanwhile, FM has moved upward and onward in other directions. Earlier, it had swept
`the field of mobile radio, such as that employed in police, emergency, and military field
`communications, where FM's low power requirements and noise reduction made it outstanding.
`FM also came to dominate microwave relay operations, the system by which TV network
`programs, multiple telephone messages, and private communications are beamed cross-country
`from a series of towers spaced about thirty miles apart. More recently FM has sparked a newer
`form of microwave system known as tropospheric scatter communications, which allows spacing
` of towers up to 600 miles apart and is now widely used in building highly secure U.S. military
`communication systems around the world. Finally, from the launching of the first U.S. earth-
`orbiting space satellite, FM has taken the lead in satellite communications. From this position,
`FM is likely to have a profound impact on all radio-TV communications through the rest of the
`century.
`
`
`The greatest achievement of these later years is the total personal vindication they have
`brought to the inventor. At his death, Howard Armstrong was in the midst of a mammoth,
`seemingly hopeless legal battle with a potent group of radio manufacturers who had refused to
`recognize him as the inventor of wideband FM, and who were attempting to break his patents
`and evade all payment of royalties for their widespread use of the invention. With great
`canniness, loyalty, and perseverance, his widow, Marion Armstrong, and his attorney, Dana M.
`Raymond, quietly continued the battle. Late in 1967, nearly fifteen years later, they won the last
`of a long line of infringement suits, winning twenty-one out of twenty-one entered, for perhaps
`the most unprecedented string of legal vindications ever obtained for an inventor. This story, too,
`is here. It is an extraordinary ending for an extraordinary career.
`
`
`The author is greatly indebted to Marion Armstrong and to the Armstrong Foundation for
`their substantial role in again bringing this biography into the hands of the public. He also wishes
`to thank the National Association of FM Broadcasters for their estimable aid in bringing the
`book to the public's attention. The author also extends his appreciation to Raymond Gomback,
`president of FM Guide, New York, for earlier resuscitating this biography and reprinting it in its
`entirety in his highly useful FM magazine. And he tenders special thanks to Harry E. Maynard
`friend associate and longtime FM and hi-fi enthusiast, for pursuing the intricate negotiations that
`brought all this about.
`
`
`LAWRENCE LESSING
`Upper Black Eddy, Pa.
`June, 1968
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`Preface to First Edition
`
`
`The subject of this biography, like other great inventors before him, was a controversial
`figure during his lifetime. The controversy did not end with his tragic death by suicide in New
`York on February 1, 1954.
`
`
`No full account exists of the life of Edwin Howard Armstrong, considered by many to be
`one of the great American inventors of our time and the single most important creator of modern
`radio. This book is meant to fill that void. It is partisan as regards the man, whom the author as a
`journalist knew over a period of fifteen years and esteemed as a great man; but it is as objective
`as the writer could make it with regard to the history and background of his life and times. The
`author gratefully acknowledges the many kindnesses and cooperation extended to him by Mrs.
`Marion McInnis Armstrong, the wife of the inventor and executor of the estate, and by the late
`Alfred McCormack, his personal lawyer and friend, who made many trenchant suggestions on
`the. manuscript but did not live to see it in print; He is particularly indebted to them for making
`freely available to him without restrictions all the inventor's personal papers and records, without
`which this biography could not have been written. The writer also extends his thanks to the
`inventor's sisters, Mrs. Bradley B. Hammond and Mrs. Thomas H. Beardsley, for aiding him in
`reconstructing the family background. The author is also indebted for many personal
`reminiscences and lively details to a host of Howard Armstrong's, friends and associates,
`including Professor Morton R. Arendt, George E. Burghard, C. Randolph Runyon, Jr., William
`T. Russell, Thomas J. Styles, Harry W. Houck, Harry Sadenwater, Ernest V. Amy and John
`Bose.
`
`
` This is in no sense, however, an "official” biography. Such opinions, judgments and
`interpretations of events as appear in these pages are the writer's own and are in no way to be
`attributed to the above sources. Armstrong was an exceedingly complex man living in a complex
`age. Many shadings of opinion are possible, even among Armstrong's closest associates, not to
`mention those hostile to him, as to the exact character of his role in our times. The portrait drawn
`here, with what skill and documentation the writer could muster, must rest for its validity upon
`the verdict of history.
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`L. L.
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`Chapter 1
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`The Attic Inventor
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`The career of Edwin Howard Armstrong began traditionally enough, about the turn of the
`century, in an attic. It was a large and comfortable room at the top of a big, gray Victorian house
`in Yonkers, New York, with turret and porches overlooking a wide sweep of the Hudson River
`and one of the better-class neighborhoods of the time, but an attic nevertheless.
`
`
`By then it was deeply rooted in the American legend that all inventors began thus. In just
`such a homely room a man alone might, with the aid of only his own two hands, and native
`intelligence, come upon a new idea that would not only make his fortune but move the world.
`Thomas Edison had begun his experiments in an unused corner of his family's farm cellar. The
`young Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, were even then building a gliding machine in a room
`behind their small bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, from which they were to go on to make the first
`powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.
`Everywhere in odd corners of the land boys of a curious bent were tinkering over makeshift
`apparatus and work tables, absorbed in pursuit of the American dream. The boy in the attic in
`Yonkers was spending most of his days and nights fiddling with a telegraph key and wireless
`contraptions.
`
`
`Years later, when he had made his mark as the single most important inventor of· modern
`radio, Howard Armstrong was persuaded to return to his attic to pose for a picture. The room had
`been kept intact by the family, locked and inviolate, as most of the things in his life were
`preserved. Indeed, the key to the room could not be found, and Armstrong, always a man of
`direct action, insisted on climbing out on the steep roof from an adjoining room and inching
`himself along a narrow, precarious gutter to force a window into his old sanctum. He had always
`liked to climb about high and dangerous places, and probably had been all over the roof as a boy.
`Except for the dust of years and fallen plaster, the attic room was as he had left it in his early
`manhood. An old cast-iron bed stood in the center. Old desks and tables lined the walls. A litter
`of dusty filing cases, chests, papers, old storage batteries and the crude "breadboard" circuits of
`his early experiments covered all the surfaces and the bed. No attempt was made to tidy the
`picture. Armstrong posed gently in the center of it, under the sloping ceiling, a tall man, bald and
`past his prime, glancing at a long-forgotten paper with a look of stoic pride and brooding
`intelligence on his mobile features.
`
`
`It was in many ways a sad picture, for behind it moved a strange and turbulent life. The
`inventor had made his fortune, as the legend had foretold. He had won medals, honors and
`encomiums for his inventions that even then were filling the world with music, sound and the
`miraculously instantaneous transmission of human intelligence. His basic contributions to radio
`were three, and together they constituted major landmarks and much of the history of radio. The
`first was the regenerative or feedback circuit (1912), which took wireless telegraphy out of the
`spark-gap, crystal-detector stage into the radio era of amplified sound. The second was the
`superheterodyne circuit (1918), which underlies all modern radio and radar reception. The third
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`and subtlest conception of all was wide-band frequency modulation or FM radio (1933), a nearly
`static-free system of high-fidelity broadcasting that revolutionized the reproduction of sound and
`opened a development in communications and the auditory arts that is not yet ended. A fourth
`invention, known as superregeneration, made in 1922, but not widely used, may yet prove as
`basic as these three.
`
`
`But the inventor had wanted something more, something hard to define. A perfection,
`perhaps, not attainable in this life, or some non-material fulfillment only suggested in his early
`yearnings, or perhaps simply justice. Hardly any of his victories had been clear-cut or generously
`conceded. Long after they seemed safely won, they had been dogged by ill luck and malicious
`detraction. Between the rather simple dreams of the boy in the attic and the long thoughts of the
`man who stood there for his portrait, something of a changed and wounding nature had happened
`to the American dream.
`
`
`The world had grown exceedingly complex. More and more the individual inventor was
`being overshadowed by the mounting establishments of science and by large technical
`corporations pursuing organized research with teams of investigators and battalions of patent
`lawyers. The old American idea of a simpler day that all creativeness and ultimate power resides
`in the individual was being shuffled out of the way. Armstrong grew up just as the big industrial
`laboratories were spreading. Most of his life was spent in heroic defiance of their overweening
`claims. He fought hard and stubbornly to maintain his independence, with a sense of integrity
`sometimes painful in its extremes. At times his life appeared all fury and fractiousness. Nearly
`half of it was spent in the law courts in some of the longest, most notable and acrimonious patent
`suits of the era. Under these pressures, Armstrong became a complex man, shy yet aggressive,
`worldly yet never losing a certain original naivety, the charm and mystery of genius. At the end
`he knew that he was fighting an implacable turn of events. The day of the lone attic inventor was
`waning. He was among the last of the breed.
`
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`Armstrong's working life spanned a half-century of change more rapid and violent than
`almost any like period in history. Even those who have lived through it find that it requires a feat
`of memory to cast themselves back into the world of fifty years ago, so remote does' it appear in
`time. Almost none of the now commonplace apparatus of modem life-the internal combustion
`engine, the airplane, the motion picture, the electric motor and dynamo, and all their
`appurtenances-had yet appeared in force to give the new century its peculiar shape and tempo.
`Within a few short years, however, the accumulated discoveries of the nineteenth century
`debouched a stream of inventions that suddenly contracted all time and distance and unleashed
`on the world an unprecedented range of new powers. New industries sprang up on these
`inventions and swiftly grew to giant size. Invariably, each new invention was hailed as a new
`instrument to draw the world closer together in trade and amity. This early optimism soon proved
`shallow and the hopes of a better, more rationally organized world mostly vain. No age suffered
`a more precipitous drop into disillusionment. But, in a sense never before experienced, the spate
`of physical change in the first half of the twentieth century more deeply transmuted the world
`and the possibilities of human life in it than any previous force in history.
`
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`Ironically, Howard Armstrong was one of the leading architects of this change, laying the
`groundwork for that system of mass communications and the control of large forces by a tiny
`flow of electrons that are characteristic of the age. Radio and electronic techniques came to be
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`the impalpable nerve fibers of a century moving ever faster over the earth, in the water and
`through the air, complementing and accelerating this mechanization and influencing every aspect
`of life. Though he carried over some of the ideals and viewpoints of a previous era, Armstrong
`was almost wholly a man of this century and intimately embroiled in it.
`
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`Try as he might, Armstrong could not mold himself into the patriarchal image of an
`Alexander Graham Bell, an Eli Whitney, a Samuel F. B. Morse, a Thomas Edison, inventors of
`an earlier, individualistic age whose composed features stare at us equanimously from textbooks
`with the grave directness of trademarks or household gods. He was of a different, stamp, modem,
`over-specialized, sensitive. The age was not conducive to either composure or security. Almost
`Nothing in his manner or appearance suggested the popular, assured figure of a great inventor.
`With his smooth round head, bald almost from youth, and his powerful big frame, almost
`invariably clothed in conservative business suits, the uniform of the age, he might have been
`taken for a banker or any anonymous businessman. Only when his reserve was pierced was it
`possible to glimpse the driving force of his mind.
`
`
`From time to time, Armstrong's battles and exploits drew the attention of the press, but
`some quality in the man or in the times withheld from him that instant recognition that is fame,
`fleeting or enduring. He was not indifferent to fame, and that, in the end, was part of the hurt.
`Though his inventions were fully as great as those of his predecessors, no touch of folk myth
`came to make of him a hero. The loud floods of advertisement passed him by. His name and
`figure tended always to slip into the background, in the constant stream of new developments,
`most of them far less basic than his own. Probably no great American inventor of recent times is
`less popularly known or understood.
`
`
`The times are not propitious for the recognition of great, rebellious or unorthodox talent.
`They are never too hospitable, but rarely have they been so bad as at present. Large impersonal
`forces are loose in the world, in this country as in more tyrannous parts of the globe, sweeping
`aside the individual of high merit in pursuit of some new corporate, collective and conformist
`destiny. These forces, and other ills more personal, crushed Armstrong in the end, as they are
`crushing others. But not before he had lived a full life of great significance and poignancy for the
`times.
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`Chapter 2
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`Nothing of this portentousness is visible in the face of the small boy who, just before the
`turn of the century, may be seen at play in a series of browned and fading vignettes pressed into
`the leaves of family photographic albums. This is all that remains of the light and substance of
`those far-off days. Yet the fading prints still retain some of the sunlight of a happy childhood
`lived without eventfulness in the long autumn of the Nineties, in middleclass America before the
`world turned cold and violent.
`
`
`He sits smilingly on a tricycle, before a long flight of brownstone steps, surmounted by a
`heavy door with a gleaming brass bell-pull. He stands, bright and self-possessed in tight knee-
`britches, beside a prized set of toy, cast-iron trains. He climbs, with middy-collar flying, a high
`hill in a country landscape. He poses, quizzical and teasing, with his younger sisters, Ethel and
`Edith. One sunny morning in 1896, he and the youngest, Edith, pause in their Sunday best for a
`picture that preserves the look and aroma of the era. Edith wears a long, plaid, taffeta dress with
`tiny leg-o'-mutton sleeves and a large flowery hat. Howard, then going on six, wears a short,
`dark sailor outfit, a flat felt boater and an open grin. His face in these early years is round, open
`and quick with joy, though the underlip is stubborn and the eyes, more often than not, are level
`and grave.
`
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`It was a tranquil, genteel, late-Victorian household into which Edwin Howard Armstrong
`was born, December 18, 1890 in a neat-brownstone house at 247 West 29iliStreet in the old
`Chelsea district of New York City, the first child of Emily and John Armstrong. His father was
`associated then and for many years thereafter with the Oxford University Press, at that time
`devoted mainly to the sale of Bibles and standard classical works. John Armstrong himself had
`been born on 19th Street of an old New York family and had gone to work early at the Oxford
`Press, eventually rising to become vice president in charge of the American branch. Howard's
`mother, whose maiden name was Smith, was the strong, gentle, deeply religious daughter of a
`prominent business family in the neighborhood. The. Smiths had their family home only a block
`away on West 30th Street, and together the Smiths and Armstrongs formed a dense phalanx of
`grandparents, uncles, aunts and auxiliary relations around all of Howard Armstrong's boyhood.
`
`
`John Armstrong had met and married Emily Smith in the old North Presbyterian Church
`at 31st Street and Ninth Avenue, an institution in which the Smiths had been exceedingly
`numerous and active for nearly half a century. John Armstrong himself was a trustee of the
`church. He was then a tall man of imposing presence, with a dark, luxuriant moustache in the
`style of the period, a poetic tum of phrase, a flow of banter and an excellent speaking voice,
`much in demand for leading prayers at church meetings and for addressing conventions in the
`book trade. Some of his speeches are still extant, carefully written out in fine Spencerian script.
`Once a year he journeyed to England to confer with his superiors, bringing back an aura of
`foreign travel, of the world outside and of communion at the fountainhead of Victorianism.
`
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`The most pervasive element in the Smith and Armstrong families was school teaching.
`Emily Smith was a graduate of Hunter College in New York and taught in the public schools for
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`ten years before marrying John Armstrong in 1888. John Armstrong had lived on 19th Street
`with two maiden sisters who were for many years teachers in the public schools. Other school-
`teaching aunts and uncles, great uncles and aunts were pendent all over the Smith family
`tree. There was therefore a strict but loving air of pedagogy throughout the two adjoining
`households that kept a young man on his toes. “Quick, boy!" was the invariable greeting of his
`great uncle Charles Frederick Hartman, who was principal of New York Public School No. 160.
`"How much is nine times five, minus three, divided by six, times two, plus nine?"
`
`
`The Armstrongs did not remain long on 29th Street. New York was then rapidly
`changing. Old neighborhoods were being inundated by rising trade and immigration, and
`residential areas were being pushed further and further uptown and out toward the suburbs. The
`old North Church was forced to seek new quarters uptown and the Smith family followed it.
`John Armstrong moved his growing family out of the crowding Chelsea area in 1895, first to
`another substantial brownstone at 26 West 97th Street, then, in 1902, to the big gabled house
`overlooking the Hudson at 1032 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, an address always referred to later
`by friends and associates as simply "1032," as if it were a magic number able to evoke at once
`the exact place and the events that transpired there. The Smith family moved up to Yonkers with
`them, into a big house on a wide lawn next door.
`
`
`The family life that went on in Yonkers as in New York was on a scale of warmth and
`closeness that has passed almost out of existence, if not out of mind. Lacking the mobility and
`distractions of a later day, the family centered on itself. All occasions were celebrated with great
`vigor amid large congregations of relatives. Family dinners of forty or fifty were nothing out of
`the ordinary. Huge preparations went on in the kitchens in a cheerful clatter of steaming kettles,
`dishes and female gossip. Sundays were holy terrors. Up early to be carefully brushed and
`dressed for morning services, then back to church again at two for Sunday school, and again at
`seven and eight for Christian Endeavor and vesper services. The Smiths practically ran the
`church. Grandfather Smith, who always regretted not having entered the ministry, was leading
`elder, choir master and superintendent of the Sunday school. Grandmother Smith supervised the
`infant class. Uncle Frank presided at the organ, Uncle Will was a deacon, and Aunt Rissie and
`her sister Emily taught in Sunday school. The children followed in the indefatigable wake of
`their elders, shoes blacked, cheeks scrubbed, hair neatly wetted down or curled, all ruffles and
`pressed pants and Sunday decorum.
`
`
`This was the little world of the nineties, the long calm before many storms. Later
`generations were to find it at once indescribably funny and gross, nostalgic and revolting, gay
`and sad, perhaps because they were to break from it so sharply. The men walked about in narrow
`trousers and high, black, cast-iron derbies. The women wore high, starched shirtwaists over
`deeply corseted bosoms and trailed long skirts of heavy-textured stuff. They lived in homes
`heavy with fretted porches, Turkish rugs, fumed oak and bloodstained mahogany. The leading
`citizens were all very solid. Nearly everyone was connected with business. William McKinley,
`the Sound Money and High Tariff man, had come to rule in the White House, and if all was not
`well with the world, at least the world was kept at a distance, walled out and far away.
`Nights were illuminated by the greenish glow of the gas mantle, for the electric lamp was
`still a luxury and only a few main streets lay harsh and bare under the glare of arc lights. The
`Chicago world's fair of 1893 put on a dazzling display of the new electricity, but men substance
`were dubious when a leading inventor Nico1a Tesla predicted that it would soon be as available
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`Revision 1: This document is available electronically at:
`http://www.CharlesRubenstein.com/490/References/Armstrong.pdf
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`11
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`Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong 
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`to everyone as tap water. The first electric trolleys were careening around comers, but the streets
`were still given over largely to the horse and carriage and dray. The gasoline buggy was a gaping
`curiosity wherever it appeared. Charles E. Duryea had begun manufacture of the country's first,
`high-hipped automobile in Ohio in 1891, but as late as 1900 weighty opinion could be obtained
`in Wall Street that it would never amount to much. The age was running to complacency after
`the ponderous building up and concentration of industry following the Civil War. It was full of
`civic pride, lush sentiments and too much foo