U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for March 5

U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for March 5

WASHINGTON, March 5, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:

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MONDAY, MARCH 5: FM RADIO

Profile America -- Monday, March 5th. FM radio as we know it began this month in 1941. That's when the first commercial FM station went on the air -- W47NV in Nashville. FM -- standing for frequency modulation -- was first proposed in a scientific paper written by Edwin Armstrong in 1922. By 1934, he demonstrated how FM was unaffected by static, unlike all the radio stations then on the air, which used AM or amplitude modulation. Critics said the idea was impractical. World War II interrupted the advance of FM broadcasting, which slowly began to gain popularity in the 1950s. Today, there are nearly 14,500 radio stations around the nation -- two-thirds of them operating on the FM band. Profile America is in its 15th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 6299
440 International Calendar of Events, Those Were the Days
Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012, t. 1132

Profile America is produced by the Public Information Office of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on a monthly CD or on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

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http://photoarchive.ap.org/
U.S. Census Bureau

Web Site: http://www.census.gov

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