Dreamers and Deceivers Read online

  “Howard, please, just lower your voice and calm down. You don’t want to look nervous, or angry, or insulted to be here. We’ll present your case as we’ve laid it out. You’ll answer the questions simply and honestly, and trust me, we can wrap this thing up in another week or so.”

  But a month passed, and another, and it still wasn’t over. Then one morning, the world turned upside down.

  Woodrow Wilson had been reelected president on a solemn promise to keep the United States away from the bloody battlefields spreading across the world. But on April 2, 1917, the president had gone before Congress to request a declaration of war on Germany. Four days later, both the Senate and the House had voted to commit U.S. troops to join in the conflict.

  The Great War, they called it. The war to end them all.

  Though no one had asked him, Lee de Forest had immediately gone on record to say that he wouldn’t be supporting the effort. Why should he risk his own life, he’d asked, to defend the characterless, incohesive goulash that was the American people? He would gladly sell the military anything they needed from his inventory, however, just like any other paying customer, at the current retail price.

  For his part, Armstrong enlisted immediately into the Army Signal Corps. At the same time, he turned over the patents to all his inventions, free of charge, for the wartime benefit of the U.S. government.

  All domestic transmitters were immediately commandeered, and production of new units flew into high gear. Though the technology was still primitive, it was clear that wireless communications would play a vital role for the Allied and Associated Powers.

  Naturally, all trivial matters such as patent lawsuits were suspended by fiat until further notice. At least that burden was lifted from Armstrong’s shoulders, if only temporarily.

  As a captain in the Signal Corps, his first base of operations was the radio labs in Paris. Advanced German aeroplanes were terrorizing the skies over Europe, and the tactical use of their own young radio technology was a major factor to be overcome. Howard Armstrong was charged with helping the United States to level this key playing field.

  First on the agenda was the improvement of wireless radio links between Allied airborne scouts and fighter aircraft and their commanders on the ground.

  • • •

  “Don’t go so easy!” Howard Armstrong shouted forward to the pilot. “Fly her like you’d take her into battle!”

  “You’d never catch me flying this hunk of junk into a fight!” the pilot shouted back. He put the open-cockpit Sopwith Scout into a hard bank and swooped into a descending turn. The wings flexed and the canvas-covered wooden fuselage creaked and complained, but the craft seemed to be holding together for the moment.

  This outdated model had a nickname among the aviators at the Paris base—they called it the Spinning Jenny. But, death trap or not, it was the only two-seater available for Armstrong’s tests, so the rickety old plane would have to do.

  He put on his headphones and set about tuning and adjusting the transceiver in his lap. It was almost impossible to hear anything at all. The wind, vibration, and engine noise were compounded by a whine of ignition static fouling the receiver. Signals from other planes and ground stations crowded in and jammed one another. When he transmitted, the base seemed to hear only a small portion of what was sent.

  On top of these problems, the radio was heavy and complicated, with multiple interacting controls. It would be a headache to tune this properly on a workbench indoors, much less in the jump seat of an aircraft in the midst of a bombing raid. There were so many delicate parts inside that breakdowns would be a daily occurrence.

  “Okay, take her down!” Armstrong shouted. “I’ve seen what I need to!”

  Back at the lab he left the notes with his new assistant, Sergeant Harry Houck, and then went out for a walk to think through his current stack of challenges.

  The Germans used innovative, high-frequency methods in their communications—“short waves” that were far outside the reach of older receivers. Intelligence services first needed to intercept those transmissions before they’d have any hope of decoding them. Bombing raids were a growing danger, and if radio could be used to detect the faint ignition noise from incoming planes it might be possible to get an early warning. Wireless location-finding also had to be improved so enemy ships and even troop movements could better be detected. As Armstrong had just seen firsthand, portable receivers required a complete redesign if two-way radio was ever going to be put to effective use in the war.

  Many lives depended on quick solutions to these problems. Despite the relentless pace, Armstrong’s nerves hadn’t bothered him once. This was exactly the sort of pressure he loved. For the first time in years there was a blessed refuge of calm and quiet in his mind. With no lawyers, writs, subpoenas, or injunctions to drain his spirit away, he was finally able to once again devote himself to pure invention.

  In the midst of that thought Armstrong stopped walking, right in the middle of the street. A schematic circuit diagram was revealing itself before his eyes, like the dawning image on a photographic plate in a cloudy darkroom tray. It was the solution—not only to one of the challenges he faced, but to possibly every one of them.

  He turned and began to run back toward the lab, suddenly frightened this image might fade and decades of progress in radio might be lost in trying to summon it forth again.

  “Harry, I’ve found it!” Armstrong shouted as he burst into the workroom and set about erasing the long blackboard by his bench. They’d spent the previous week writing out their long-term research plans there, but his assistant knew better than to object.

  “What have you found?” Houck asked, but Armstrong was already deep inside his own mind, drawing whatever it was that had possessed him.

  When Houck began to understand what he was seeing, he joined his leader at the board, and for hours the two men worked without a word until the diagram was finally complete.

  Inventors don’t always see the potential of a stroke of genius in the moment it arrives. But as they stood back and took in what they’d just brought into the world, both men knew they’d made history, and had changed the science of radio forever.

  Armstrong had set out to provide a leap forward in the clarity of radio signals, to improve long-distance reception and dampen interference, to make receivers simple to tune by an untrained operator, and to open the door to wireless direction-finding breakthroughs that could change the course of the war. He’d solved it all in a single stroke

  It would be called the superheterodyne.

  1924

  The Great War had been over for years, but David Sarnoff knew his corporate battles would probably never end.

  Marconi had been absorbed into the new Radio Corporation of America, and though he was still only in his mid-twenties, Sarnoff found himself second in command at RCA. He’d dreamed of broadcast entertainment and a radio receiver in every American home. Now, with RCA booming and its fledgling National Broadcasting Company poised to take off nationwide, those dreams were fast becoming reality. That success had brought competitors crawling out of the woodwork on every side.

  Howard Armstrong’s superheterodyne had made practical the mass production of receivers that were simple enough for average people to use. Through some brilliant business hocus-pocus, Sarnoff had both confounded his competitors and leveraged his friendship with Armstrong to create a slim window of opportunity for RCA to be first to market. The admen had named the company’s flagship set the Radiola, and the copy was right on target.

  You will agree with Marconi

  When you hear the sensational new

  Radiola Super-Heterodyne

  acclaimed by inventor of radio as “a great advance”

  But there was trouble in paradise.

  Armstrong’s prototypes had worked like a charm, but after the R&D labs at General Electric and Westinghouse had put their thumbprint on the design, the result was noisy, quirky, and so heavy it was just
barely portable.

  Having created massive consumer demand, and with his nervous stockholders and dealerships awaiting a payoff on their investments, Sarnoff had just canceled millions of dollars in manufacturing orders for a product he considered too flawed to produce.

  He was known as a man with all the answers, but for once David Sarnoff had no idea what to do next.

  “Why not call Armstrong?” his secretary asked.

  This bright young woman, Marion MacInnes, had already pulled Sarnoff’s fat from the fire on more than one occasion. She was sitting at her desk, looking dreamily at a photograph of Howard Armstrong—the very picture that had gotten him banned from the corporate premises. The photo showed the still-boyish inventor balanced on the peak of the 450-foot antenna atop the RCA building at 30 Rockefeller Center. When the papers ran the shot, the insurance guys went apoplectic and probably would have had Armstrong arrested if Sarnoff hadn’t intervened.

  Armstrong—now that wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “Get him up here,” Sarnoff said, “and alert security to let him through. But so help me, Marion, if he climbs that tower again, genius or not, he’s going to spend the night in jail.”

  The two men met on the roof of the building, far from the prying eyes of the fretting RCA executives. As Armstrong pored over the production schematics for the Radiola, he and Sarnoff had a few quiet minutes to reminisce.

  “I never got a chance to apologize to you,” Armstrong said.

  “For what?”

  “For selling the rights to the superheterodyne to Westinghouse. I didn’t want to leave you out, but I couldn’t wait. I needed the money for the lawyers.”

  “I was pretty hot about that for a while,” Sarnoff admitted, “but all’s forgiven. Let’s just say that deals were made, and I made sure I came out on top. Now I’ve got Westinghouse and GE right where I want them. AT&T is even trying to stick their nose into this business, but we’re holding them off as well.” He would have gone on, but as he watched Armstrong for a few moments more, he realized that his old friend really had no capacity for the nuance of this sort of war. “You’re still fighting de Forest, then, on regeneration? How long has that been going on?”

  “Almost ten years now. I won against him in ’21, and then he appealed and now I’m set to win again. When that verdict comes down I’m going to run up a flag with my patent number on it, big enough that he can see it from his house on the Hudson.”

  “Why not just drop it? Settle, and move on?”

  “He’s sworn he’ll never pay damages to me until he’s lost in the highest court in the land.”

  “Then waive damages and take your win. Make de Forest buy a license if he wants to use your work. That’ll burn him up.”

  “There are some things a man can’t compromise on. It’s not only the money I’m owed. You’ve heard what he says about me to any hack reporter who’ll listen. He calls me a thief.”

  “You’re in good company. You should hear some of the mud he slings about Marconi, though being an eyewitness, I can confirm that some of the more lurid tales of his appetite for the ladies are absolutely true.”

  “Well, that’s certainly more than I ever wanted to know about Marconi’s love life.”

  “Seriously though, Howard, as a friend, you should think hard about cutting your losses with this de Forest business. Put it behind you.”

  “I can’t give it up, David. It’s my reputation at stake.”

  “Ten years,” Sarnoff sighed. “It’s a crime, that’s what it is.” He could see a change come over Armstrong as he spoke of the case—the constant pressure must have been tearing him down, bit by bit. “Well, let’s hope old Lee does as bad a job before the Supreme Court as he does at reporting the news. Remember the night when he called the 1916 presidential election? ‘Breaking news! Charles Evans Hughes beats Woodrow Wilson!’ He splashed that scoop all over the tri-state area, and then he stuck by it for almost a week.”

  Armstrong smiled, but there was no joy in it. Sarnoff thought it probably best to change the subject.

  “Speaking of money,” Sarnoff continued, “I’m sitting on orders for one hundred thousand radio sets, and I don’t have a single one to deliver. Do you think you can help me with that?”

  Howard Armstrong put the drawings aside.

  “I’ll tell you what. If I can do it, I want a signed letter on your stationery, giving me permanent permission to climb that antenna tower behind us any damned time I want.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” Sarnoff said. “I’ve got a lovely young woman downstairs, right outside my office, who’s got a crush on you to beat the band. You give me the Radiola, and I’ll introduce you to her.”

  This time Armstrong’s smile was genuine. He held out his hand, and they shook on it.

  “And there’s one other thing I want you to start thinking about,” Sarnoff said. “I was listening to our stations the other night, during that big rain, and the static was awful. From March until October we have to print a damned weather report right next to the program listings in the paper so people can see if the storms will wipe out their reception. You find me a way to eliminate that noise, clean up our signal regardless of the weather, and we’ll own this industry for the next fifty years.”

  “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “And Howard, listen to me,” Sarnoff said. His tone was serious. “It’s a bitter world we’re operating in. There are empires at stake, and that’s much bigger than you and me. That’s bigger than friendship. This suit with de Forest? You must know he’s got AT&T behind him now. You can’t win alone anymore. The age of the independent inventor is over and done. You’ve strayed in the past and I understand why. But if you stick with me, you’ll own the future.”

  “I won’t believe that, David. I think the world of you, but I’ll never be a company man. You’ve got big ideas, I know, but I’ve got a few of my own.”

  Sarnoff nodded. “I’ve heard that assistant of yours call you ‘the Major.’ That’s from the war, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, around here they call me ‘the General.’ I’m going to be running this place before you know it, and RCA is only the beginning. And Howard?”

  “Yeah?”

  Sarnoff put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

  “You mustn’t ever forget that a general outranks a major.”

  1934

  The ten years that followed ushered in a world of change.

  There were times of happiness greater than Howard Armstrong had ever known. He’d found his one true love in Sarnoff’s assistant, Marion MacInnes, and after a blissful courtship they’d been married. Together with Harry Houck, Armstrong had solved the mass production problems and David Sarnoff had sold his hundred thousand receivers, and then many hundreds of thousands more.

  With eighteen thousand shares of company stock as his reward, Armstrong had become the largest single shareholder in RCA. But the Depression took its toll. Stock that had been worth $572 per share in 1929 had plummeted to just $12.25 by 1933.

  As an industry, radio was coming into its own. They were already calling it the “Golden Age of Broadcasting.” Even as unemployment soared, people who struggled to buy food and pay the rent never missed a payment on their radio sets. It was a gathering place for the troubled nation. The airwaves were filled with popular music, news, and sporting events, as well as comedy and drama from the greatest stars of the day. Even the president regularly went on the air to reassure his fellow Americans that happy days would soon be here again.

  It certainly didn’t seem that way to Howard Armstrong.

  By then de Forest vs. Armstrong had been heard by a dozen courts, with wins, losses and stalemates claimed by both litigants. After all this, the Supreme Court of the United States had just issued its decision on the matter.

  Through what could only be explained as a complete misunderstanding of the technical foundation of the case, the court had ruled against
Edwin Howard Armstrong.

  Finally, after almost twenty years, the verdict of history was now etched in stone: Lee de Forest had won. Armstrong was a thief.

  May 29, 1934

  Howard Armstrong stood in the wings awaiting his introduction at an annual meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers.

  He’d been invited to give that night’s keynote speech long before the Supreme Court’s decision had come down. It was a standing-room-only crowd, and by now most everyone in the audience knew of the ruling.

  Though Armstrong dreaded yet another round of public humiliation, he had never broken a commitment to his peers. He was sure, however, that his planned presentation on frequency modulation would now be inappropriate to deliver. He would keep his notes in his pocket. There was only one thing he needed to say.

  As he took to the stage the crowd was mostly silent.

  “My friends,” Armstrong began, “and my colleagues. As you may be aware, my long fight with Mr. de Forest has finally come to a close. It has been the longest such case thus far in American history, and it was brought to determine who is the rightful inventor of regeneration. The verdict of the high court has now been rendered, and it was not the outcome that I’d hoped to see.”

  He could feel a twitching begin in his neck, and he held a grip on the podium to try to keep it down.

  “In 1917, this organization saw fit to award to me its Medal of Honor for the discovery of that very principle. I will never forget that night. To me it seems like only yesterday, and yet it was so long ago.”

  Emotion rose into his throat and took hold there. Only a few more words needed to be spoken, and he prayed he could deliver them.

  “With the Supreme Court’s decision, I no longer have a right to the honor that you so graciously bestowed upon me.” He took the small engraved plaque from his coat pocket and placed it on the table beside him. “I only wish—”

  A single shout of “No!” arose from the back of the auditorium.

  Another man yelled out, “It’s yours, Howard, and we all know it!”