“What Wireless Is Yet to Be”

Abstract

This chapter opens with the discussion of Ray Stannard Baker's The Boy's Book of Inventions: Stories of the Wonders of Modern Science and Russell Doubleday's Stories of Inventors: The Adventures of Inventors and Engineers, True Incidents and Personal Experiences. Drawing upon Otto Lilienthal's study of birds, the pioneer of flight made substantial advances in the design of gliders, including the use of arched rather than flat surfaces on his wings. The chapter then shifts to focus on Edwin Howard Armstrong's early life and the life on Warburton Avenue. Armstrong passed his childhood and youth in the calm and comfort that middle-class families were able to maintain during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. The chapter then recounts Armstrong's relationship with Charles Underhill, a wireless enthusiast and inventor. It also introduces a faculty member who influenced Armstrong most profoundly in his investigations of wireless — Michael Pupin. The chapter highlights Armstrong's inquiries about the potential of regeneration and his discovery of its application to the amplification abilities of the vacuum tube.