On December 23, 1933, Edwin Armstrong demonstrated the FM system to David Sarnoff, the President of RCA, then the dominate party in radio broadcasting. Sarnoff had years before mentioned that he wished that Armstrong would come up with a "little black box" that would remove the static from AM reception. Armstrong did him one better. Unfortunately, Sarnoff realized that FM would deeply cut into AM broadcastings revenues and he therefore mounted legal battle after legal battle with Armstrong that eventually led to Armstrong's suicide. For more, read Empire of the Air by Tom Lewis or watch the PBS video of the same name.
See: http://www.invent.org/book/book-text/3.html