Frost, Gary Lewis (Author)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
McVaugh, Michael Rogers
Edition Details: Advisor: McVaugh, Michael
Physical Details: 305 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation revises the traditional "great man " history of frequency modulation (FM) radio. For half a century, FM has been assumed to be solely the revolutionary brainchild of the "lone wolf " genius, Edwin Howard Armstrong, who invented "wideband " FM radio in 1933. In fact, the development of FM was more an evolutionary than revolutionary process. The concept of frequency modulation radio dates to 1902, and soon after that year, thousands of wireless operators incorporated frequency modulation radiotelegraphy into their normal practice. Interest in FM radiotelephony first took root two decades later, when some engineers hoped to alleviate several technical problems spawned by the broadcasting boom of the early 1920s. Little of their work proved fruitful, however, partly because FM research was dispersed among several laboratories. In 1928, however, an organizational shift in the U.S. radio manufacturing industry caused FM research efforts to be consolidated into the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Armstrong, who enjoyed a close relationship with RCA, learned about that work and used the knowledge to accelerate the development of wideband FM. This study illuminates the social-technical dynamic of FM specifically, and technological development in general, by examining the roles of three communities: (1) RCA engineers, whose successes and failures with FM informed Armstrong's choices, (2) amateur radio culture, which helped educate the generation of men who developed FM radio after 1920, and (3) "FM pioneers, " broadcasters whom Armstrong recruited to back and promote his system, after RCA declined to do so. FM pioneers also helped discover several advantages of Armstrong's system that had eluded him. It was FM pioneers also, and not Armstrong, who persuaded the FCC to establish the first commercial FM broadcast service in 1940. Thus, the inventor of wideband FM was no lone wolf inventor, but rather a first-among-equals "heterogeneous engineer " who invented and obtained acceptance for his version of an idea that had been evolving unsteadily for forty years.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65 (2005): 2740. UMI pub. no. 3140315.
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