[Swprograms] Armstrong anniversary BC

[Joel Rubin <jmrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wasn't the Alpine facility used by some broadcasters just after
9/11/2001. (Including, ironically, WNBC)

http://www.wfdu.fm at, as Jean Shepherd used to call it, Fairly
Rediculous University has Windows Media streaming.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ent_radio/story/317065p-271202c.html

Celebrating FM's 70th anniversary

Radio

By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

On June 16, 1935, Major Edwin Howard Armstrong conducted the first
public demonstration of a radio broadcasting technology called
frequency modulation - or, for short, FM.

Signals sent by FM didn't travel as far as those sent by the existing
radio technology, AM. But they were much clearer.

Armstrong, a radio technology expert who developed several vital
communications systems for the military during World War I, saw FM as
a potentially huge commercial breakthrough.

Looking back today, of course, we can see he was right. FM has
dominated broadcast technology for more than 30 years.

But FM didn't take off until the mid-'60s, and by then Armstrong was
long gone.

Several major players had claimed credit for his FM technology and the
outgunned Armstrong spent years in what he feared was a losing legal
battle to retain what he had developed.

In 1954, he killed himself, meaning he didn't know that his widow
would continue and win his legal fight.

Armstrong is a fascinating story and a critically important figure in
radio history, and this Saturday, WFDU (89.1 FM) will mark the 70th
anniversary of that first FM test with a special program from Alpine,
N.J. - where the world's first FM tower, for station W2XMN, was
erected in the late '30s.

The broadcast, hosted by Judy DeAngelis of WINS (1010 AM), starts at
noon with a feature on Armstrong. Interviewees will include Renville
McMann, who worked for Armstrong and later became a vice president in
the CBS Technology Center.

The show will detail Armstrong's fight with the powerful radio
networks and include a radio dramatization of Ken Burns' PBS show
"Empire of the Air," which explored that struggle.

Vintage clips will include a 1941 test broadcast that marked the first
use of FM, instead of telephone lines, to relay a remote signal and
the final broadcast of W2XMN, which signed off in 1954 after
Armstrong's death.

Originally published on June 9, 2005

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