you've reached the end of the internet....
Well, not really, but....
It started when I was reading about Lee De Forest (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961), inventer of the Audion, the first triode tube that could amplify voltage.
[img:245:341]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... Forest.jpg[/img]
The Audion
[img:320:219]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... e_1906.jpg[/img]
Then as I read more, it lead me to the life of Edwin Howard Armstrong. (December 18, 1890 – January 31, 1954)
Inventor of the Superheterodyne receiver and later FM radio.
Known as the "Father of FM Radio".
[img:150:199]http://0.tqn.com/d/radio/1/0/f/5/EdwinArmstrong.jpg[/img]
During world war one he worked in the signal corp and reached the rank of major, which remained as a title throughout his life.
Armstrong discovered that, when the positive feedback was sufficiently increased, the circuit became an “oscillator,” and was able to transmit its own signal.
Thus, in one masterstroke, a sensitive “regenerative” receiver and an effective electronic transmitter had been born.
About the same time Lee De Forest began claiming that the idea of regeneration was his.
Major Armstrong and Lee De Forest didn't like each other and fought over patents for years.
De Forest actually won the rights to the patent which was contested for years in court.
Later Armstrong would have to fight others, such as RCA, Westinghouse, AT&T for patent ownership of his designs.
Starting in 1934 he worked for David Sarnoff, president of RCA, who he had met in the 1920's at a Jack Dempsey boxing match.
About the same time, he met and later married Sarnoff's personal secretary, Marion McInnis in 1923.
As a wedding present, Armstrong gave his new bride the first portable radio as a wedding present.
[img:200:160]http://www.ee.columbia.edu/images/pic-5.jpg[/img]
From May 1934 until October 1935, Armstrong conducted the first large scale field tests of his FM radio technology from a laboratory constructed by RCA on the 85th floor of the Empire State Building.
While at RCA he constructed this antenna which he was fond of climbing.
He sent this picture to Sarnoff who became furious and banned him from the building.
[img:175:227]http://www.ee.columbia.edu/images/onantenna.jpg[/img]
[img:175:227]http://www.ee.columbia.edu/images/onballRB.jpg[/img]
In late 1937, Armstrong financed construction of the first FM radio station, W2XMN, a 40 kilowatt broadcaster in Alpine, New Jersey.
[img:132:204]http://www.ee.columbia.edu/images/towerCA2.jpg[/img]
After world war two, Armstrong turned his attention once more to the promotion of frequency modulation (FM).
(No Static At All)
He saw it grow in popularity as a broadcasting medium as more FM stations went on the air and more FM sets were sold to receive the programs.
Politics and lobbying would make the radio industry slow to convert due to the money already invested in AM stations across the nation.
Early FM stations tended to be more of the underground type, and played programming that was lesser known to the uninitiated.
However, few outside the industry had ever heard of Edwin Howard Armstrong—the man who invented it.
Furthermore, manufacturers began to build and sell FM equipment ignoring his patents.
Goaded perhaps by the bitter memory of losing his regenerative patent years before, Armstrong became embroiled in
twenty one infringement actions to adjudicate his FM patents.
Battling giant corporations with batteries of lawyers used up his resources and his mental health.
Financially broken and mentally beaten after years of legal tussles with RCA and others, Armstrong lashed out at his wife of 31 years during an argument.
As a result she left him to live with her sister.
On January 31, 1954 Armstrong removed the air conditioner from the window and jumped to his death from the thirteenth floor of his New York City apartment.
Well that's today's history lesson.
Other interesting stories about engineers in history that ended in tragedy.
http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/doom_eng.htm
