An extremely innovative inventor, Edwin Armstrong unfortunately spent as much time in court fighting lawsuits as he did in the laboratory. Born on December 18, 1890, Armstrong decided he was going to be an inventor by age fourteen. He had read of Guglielmo Marconi and became very interested in wireless radio communication. Before he was twenty he had built his own transmitter and was broadcasting radio signals. He enrolled at Columbia University, studied under Michael Pupin (1858-1935), and received a degree in electrical engineering in 1913. In 1912 Armstrong created one of his three major inventions, the regenerative circuit. Working with the audion, a vacuum tube invented by Lee de Forest to detect radio signals, he discovered that feeding the tube's current back into itself enhanced the sensitivity of the tube greatly. He was able to amplify distant radio signals loudly enough to be heard without the use of headphones. He also...