Edwin Howard Armstrong

The Regenerative Circuit

Alan R. Klase The New Jersey Antique Radio Clubs

Radio Technology Museum

at the

InfoAge
Science / History Learning Center http://www.rtm.ar88.net/

Radio's Premier Inventor

The Regenerative Circuit (1912) - Greatly strengthening radio signals and making them audible. The Superheterodyne Circuit (1918) - Allowing radio listeners to tune to a single station, with optimum reception (modern radio) The Superregenerative Circuit (1922) - Opened up VHF communications - Made Armstrong rich The Frequency Modulation System (1933)

- High-Fidelity broadcasting
- Superior mobile radio systems His inventions and developments form the backbone of Radio Communications as we know it.

The Major

Were Living in the Information Age

Were Living in the Information Age

Remedial Radio

The Condenser or Capacitor

Stores Energy as electrostatic charge.

Faraday, Michael (1791-1867)

Direct Current

i e
George Simon Ohm

e iR
Power = 6 volts X 1 ampere = 6 watts 8 Energy = Power X Time - e.g., 6 watt seconds = 6 joules

Magnetic Field due to Electrical Current

Electromagnets and Inductors

Store energy as a magnetic field.
Taught and did research at Princeton.

Joseph Henry 1797 - 1878

Ca. 1824

10

Alternating Current

Maxwell
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873)

James Clerk Maxwell 1831 - 1879

12

i
C 300,000,000 m / s F F

13

Lets prove it

C 186 ,000 miles / hour 3100 miles F 60 cycles per sec ond

Lets prove it

C 186 ,000 miles / hour 3100 miles F 60 Hz

Spark-Gap Oscillator

But, will this actually work?

16

Eureka!

17

Photographic plate rotated at a known angular velocity allows measurement of the oscillatory frequency.

Hertz
Ca. 1888 Heinrich Hertz 1857 - 1894

18

Antennas launch and intercept radio waves!

A Hertzian Experiment

From Invention & Innovation in the Radio Industry, W. Rupert MacLaurin, 1949

One cycle per second = one Hertz

20

Marconi
at Villa Griffone 1895

Photos and drawings from Early Radio by Peter R. Jensen

Guglielmo Marconi 1874 1937

But, what if we want to run two systems in the same area? 21

A Tuned Circuit Selects the Desired Radio Frequency and Rejects Interference

By varying the induction coil L or the capacitor C we change the resonant frequency of the circuit.

Alternating currents near the resonant frequency are accepted.

Others are rejected.

Patent 7777
Application filed 12 April 1900

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge 1851 1940 Synytony

From The Wonders of Wireless Telegraphy J. A. Fleming, London, 1913

23

Two Circuit Tuner

Open Circuit

Closed Circuit

5/11/2006

24

Multiple Tuned Circuits Improve Selectivity

5/11/2006

25

The Effects of Variable Magnetic Coupling

5/11/2006

26

The Loose Coupler

State-of-the-Art Wireless Receiver ca. 1910

All the energy that gets to your eardrum came from the transmitter!

We need a reliable Amplifier!

29

From The Wonders of Wireless Telegraphy J. A. Fleming, London, 1913 30

The Edison Effect and The Fleming Valve

Sir John Ambrose Fleming 1849 1945

(Thomas Edison 1880)

1904

Detection of Radio Signals

The Audion

Lee Deforest
1873 - 1971

1906
33

DeForest Audion

An Audion Radio Receiver

A-BATTERY B-BATTERY

Lee DeForest 1906

Armstrong Experimentation

Armstrong Experimentation
However, during this investigation It was observed that a condenser placed across the telephone receivers in a simple audion receiver sometimes gave an increase in signal strength; not much of an increase, but nevertheless a very definite increase, and with only a small value of capacity. Now I tried a condenser across the phones many times before (what amateur has not, when graduating to the audlon from crystal detector stage, where telephone shunt condensers originated), but never before had there been any observable change in signal strength. The small condenser indicated strongly the presence of high-frequency oscillations in the plate circuit, and I thought about it a great deal without being able to account for their presence there in any satisfactory manner. During the summer vacation that year, an idea suggested by the fundamental axiom of radio, ''wherever there are high frequency oscillations, tune the circuit," and the idea to see what would happen if the plate circuit of an audion detector should be tuned by means of an Inductance.
THE REGENERATIVE CIRCUIT by Edwin H. Armstrong THE ELECTRIC JOURNAL. Vol. XVIII, No. 4, April 1921

Armstrong Experimentation

All the old timers remember CC, later known as MCC and WCC, the Marconi press station at Wellfleet, Mass. This station was the one-hundred percent reliable testing standby of all experimenters, and on MCC the first tests were made. A standard audion detector system was set up and tuned in, and a tuning inductance introduced into the plate circuit of the audion.
THE REGENERATIVE CIRCUIT by Edwin H. Armstrong THE ELECTRIC JOURNAL. Vol. XVIII, No. 4, April 1921

Regeneration!
Then various things began to happen. As the plate inductance was increased, the signals were boosted in strength to an intensity unbelievable for those days, the more inductance the louder the signal, until suddenly the characteristic tone of M. C. C. -- the tone which any of the old timers, if they heard it on Judgment Morn, would recognize instantly -- disappeared, and in its place was a loud hissing tone, undeniably the same station, but recognizable only by the characteristic swing and the messages transmitted.

A slight reduction of the plate Inductance and the old tone was back again, -- and then the placing of the hand near a tuning condenser, and the hissing tone reappeared.
It required no particular mental effort to realize that here was a fundamentally new phenomenon, as obscure as the principle of the operation of the audion itself, but which opened up an entirely new field of practical operation.

Great amplification obtained at once! 22 SEP 1912

Edwin Howard Armstrong

Regeneration

31 January 1913

Regen Patent Model

Demonstrated to Sarnoff at the Marconi station at Belmar January 1914

41

The Regenerative Circuit

Regeneration
Regeneration
First worthwhile active receiver Autodyne (oscillating) mode permits reception of continuous-wave signals. First vacuum-tube RF oscillator
Improved transmitter efficiency. Allowed practical radio telephone

Modes of Operation
Regenerative (not oscillating)
Improved sensitivity Improved selectivity Square-law response

Autodyne (oscillating)
Heterodyne reception Frequency changer Linear response

44

Continuous-wave (CW) Telegraphy and Heterodyne Reception

FAUDIO FLO FC

FC

FAUDIO

FLO
F
For example: Continuous wave carrier, Fc, at 1000KHz Local oscilatoe, LO, at 999KHz Audio output at 1KHz

45

Marconi Site - Belmar

Became friends with David Sarnoff, later the president of the Radio Corporation of America, while demonstrating the regenerative receiver at the Marconi site in Belmar (InfoAge) in January 1914.

Radio's premier inventor

The Regenerative Circuit (1912) - Greatly strengthening radio signals and making them audible. The Superheterodyne Circuit (1918) - Allowing radio listeners to tune to a single station, with optimum reception (modern radio) The Superregenerative Circuit (1922) - Opened up VHF communications - Made Armstrong rich The Frequency Modulation System (1933)

- High-Fidelity broadcasting
- Superior mobile radio systems His inventions and developments form the backbone of Radio Communications as we know it.

The Major

January 31, 1954

Suicide after long patent fight with RCA

A Good Read
Lee DeForest Edwin H. Armstrong David Sarnoff