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Professional and personal files including Armstrong's correspondence with professional associations, other engineers, and friends, his research notes, circuit diagrams, lectures, articles, legal papers, and other related materials. Of his many inventions and developments, the most important are: 1) the regenerative or feedback circuit, 1912, the first amplified radio reception, 2) the superheterodyne circuit, 1918, the basis of modern radio and radar, 3) superregeneration, 1922, a very simple, high-power receiver now used in emergency mobile service, and 4) frequency modulation - FM, 1933, static-free radio reception of high fidelity. More than half the files concern his many lawsuits, primarily with Radio Corporation of America, over infringement of the Armstrong patents. Litigation continued until 1967. Other files deal with his work in the Marcellus Hartley Research Laboratory at Columbia University, 1913-1935, and with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I, his Air Force contracts for communications development, Army research during World War II, the Radio Club of America, the Institute of Radio Engineers, FM development at his radio station at Alpine, N.J., the use of FM in television, his involvement in Federal Communications Commission hearings and legislation, and his work with the Zenith Radio Corporation. Also, letters to H.J. Round

Correspondence, documents, memoranda, reports, and clippings of book reviews. The correspondence is chiefly with public, university, and special libraries, and with foundations and other organizations. There is correspondence with several leading American librarians, such as Carleton Joeckel, Joseph Wheeler, and Charles C. Williamson. About one half of the collection contains the field reports, interview reports, questionnaires, vocational interest blanks, and related materials used for one Inquiry study by Oliver Garceau"Library Government and Politics", which was published by the Columbia University Press in 1949 as THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS. The manuscript of a report for the Russell Sage Foundation"The Nature of Public Communication", 1955, was added.

Correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, contracts, legal briefs, patents, and other documents, music scores, cartoons, technical drawings, account books, blueprints, photographs, clippings, printed legal briefs & transcripts, proofs, scrapbooks, and other printed materials of William M. Speer.