Another Armstrong who Fought the Big Boys and Surrendered

As you know, about two weeks ago a guy named Armstrong decided to end his fight against a pretty big institution.  

The general reaction in the media culture seemed to be one of disappointment tempered with claims that the entire business Armstrong was in has long been corrupt.  George Vecsey's editorial took that approach.  Some have come to his defense by attacking the agency that attacked him. I heard ESPN's Steven A. Smith muse, as he likes to do, that the kid-gloves treatment of Armstrong -- a hero to tens of millions -- is very different from the media treatment of Barry Bonds, who has been vilified for his use of illegal steroids in his baseball career. 

Some commentators are not buying Lance Armstrong's claim that he could no longer keep fighting the USADA's claims of his using steroids because he no longer wanted to waste his energy on a fight where the fix is already in.  They see Armstrong's refusal to keep fighting as a silent admission that he did do steroids. 

I have no idea what Armstrong did.   Of his sport, I only know what little I have read in the papers, as it were.  I know what he's raised through his foundation, and I'm sure he's saved a few lives by promoting awareness of the cancer that he refused to allow to beat him.

But as I prepared to teach a course on the history of American broadcasting, I was reminded -- largely due to the Ken Burns-produced documentary Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio -- of another Armstrong who surrendered to a big institution, with more tragic results. 

Edwin Howard Armstrong was a gifted engineer who made several important contributions to the development of radio-receiving and radio-transmitting technology.  You can find the details pretty easily enough at the usual sites; here's a nice short bio from Donna Halpern.  What concerns me here is the story of his final battle, with the Radio Corporation of America, RCA, owner of NBC, one of the largest communications corporations in the world in the 1950's. 

Armstrong had one time been a close friend of NBC boss David Sarnoff, but in the forties, Armstrong developed a new technique of receiving radio signals by modulating the frequency of the waves instead of their amplitude, removing all the static interference and producing remarkable life-like sound. This, of course, was FM, still for most of us far superior in quality than AM.   Armstrong went to Sarnoff for backing of his discovery, but Sarnoff demurred.  Why?

The cost of re-fitting the large home AM radio sets to accommodate FM would have been too great at the time. Remember: RCA manufactured radios at the time, and the major R and D was going into television.  FM would have thrown a monkey wrench into the works. Armstrong struck out on his own, creating a sizable FM radio network, but as he began to arrange for licensees for manufacturing, RCA began to stifle Armstrong.  Although the government had decreed that newly manufactured TV sets would have to carry their audio via FM sound, Armstrong, inventor of the patent, would receive no royalties from RCA, who simply refused to pay him. RCA used other tactics to keep Armstrong from succeeding. Time and money were on their side.

Armstrong fought a long battle with RCA over all forms of patent infringements, but he became so obsessed that he lost control.   One night, he attacked his wife Marion, who had once been David Sarnoff's secretary.   With his money running out because of legal fees, and his patent rights soon to expire, Armstrong finally gave up -- by jumping to his death outside his New York apartment.  (Eventually, RCA did settle the case with Marion, but she had to fight almost as hard to get that.)

Let me make this clear: Armstrong was a very successful man.  He'd made millions from his inventions. He had several properties and lived a financially comfortable life.   But when faced with the army of lawyers and other suits who could get the FCC on their side, Armstrong wasn't in a fair fight. 

This little parable of American industry doesn't necessarily tell us anything about Lance Armstrong's motives in not contesting the USADA's allegations.   But it does suggest to me that even a man as famous and successful as Lance Armstrong has a limit to his resources.  Of course, if Armstrong was juicing, that becomes a much simpler reason he gave up.   Sources who know both the sport and the Agency can better tell us what's plausible, if there are parallels between the stories of these two men named Armstrong.