7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

contributions to the instruments of science, engineering,
and television and for his stimulation of the application of
engineering to medicine. He was also founder-president
of the International Federation for Medical Electronics
and Biological Engineering, a recipient of the Faraday
Medal from Great Britain (1965) and the U.S. Presidential
Medal of Science (1966), and a member of the U.S. National
Hall of Fame from 1977.
Zworykin wrote Photocells and Their Applications (1932),
Television (1940; rev. ed., 1954), Electron Optics and the
Electron Microscope (1946), Photoelectricity and Its Application
(1949), and Television in Science and Industry (1958).

Edwin H. Armstrong

(b. Dec. 18, 1890, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. Jan. 31/Feb. 1, 1954,
New York City)

A

merican inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong laid the
foundation for much of modern radio and electronic
circuitry, including the regenerative and superheterodyne
circuits and the frequency modulation (FM) system.

Early Life

Armstrong was from a genteel, devoutly Presbyterian
family of Manhattan. His father was a publisher and his
mother a former schoolteacher. Armstrong was a shy boy
interested from childhood in engines, railway trains, and
all mechanical contraptions.
At age 14, fired by reading of the exploits of Guglielmo
Marconi in sending the first wireless message across the
Atlantic Ocean, Armstrong decided to become an inventor.
He built a maze of wireless apparatus in his family’s attic
and began the solitary, secretive work that absorbed his
life. Except for a passion for tennis and, later, for fast