Suicide
Financially broken and mentally beaten after years of legal tussles with RCA and others, Armstrong lashed out at his wife one day with a fireplace poker, striking her on the arm. MacInnis left their apartment to stay with her sister, Marjorie Tuttle, in Granby, Connecticut.
On January 31, 1954 Armstrong removed the air conditioner from the window and jumped to his death from the thirteenth floor of his New York City apartment. His body was found fully clothed, with a hat, overcoat and gloves, the next morning by a River House employee on a third-floor balcony. The New York Times described the contents of his two-page suicide note to his wife: "he was heartbroken at being unable to see her once again, and expressing deep regret at having hurt her, the dearest thing in his life." The note concluded, "God keep you and Lord have mercy on my Soul." After his death, a friend of Armstrong estimated that 90 percent of his time was spent on litigation against RCA. Upon hearing the news, David Sarnoff supposedly remarked, "I did not kill Armstrong."
MacInnis was able to formally establish Armstrong as the inventor of FM following protracted court proceedings over five of his basic FM patents. Until her death in 1979 she participated in the Armstrong Memorial Research Foundation that she founded.
Edwin Armstrong was buried in Locust Grove Cemetery, Merrimac, Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: Edwin Howard Armstrong
Famous quotes containing the word suicide:
“What man who carries a heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.”
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852)
“When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)