The invention of the radio allowed information and music to be broadcast across long distances. The radio was first used to communicate between ships and land bases.

It was on this day, December 26th, in 1933 that the FM radio was patented. Edwin Howard Armstrong’s patent came through as he was concurrently battling another inventor for the rights to the invention of superheterodyne radio.

Armstrong invented wide-band frequency modulation (FM) radio in a laboratory at Columbia University. His FM radio invention was different because it varied the frequency rather than varying the amplitude of a radio wave. This new technology eliminated “static,” which is a common problem with AM radio.