History Focus for August 26

A short focus on a person or event associated with this day in History.

Lee DeForest - (1873-1961)

Lee DeForest was born on August 26, 1873, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He was educated at Yale University. Right from the start it seemed that DeForest was an inventor. He designed a number of the earliest wireless radio and telegraph transmitters. He held patents for hundreds of different items including the photoelectric cell and the surgical radio knife. In total he held the patents on more than 300 other electrical and electronic device. In 1923 he became the first to demonstrate sound on moving film.

His invention of the electron tube was probably his most important invention. He called this type of vacuum tube the audion. Today this three element vacuum tube is called the triode. This tube, invented in 1906, revolutionized the entire field of electronics. The audion became a key component in nearly all radio, radar, television, and computer systems until the transistor began replacing vacuum tubes in the early 1950's.

Wireless radio broadcasting was unthinkable in the early 1900s and DeForest was considered a fraud. He was actually arrested for selling stock to underwrite the development of his invention. No one actually believed it would work. He was forced into selling the rights to his patent to American Telephone and Telegraph for $500,000. The public thought that AT&T had made a foolish investment. But ... as we know now ... it worked. In 1910 De Forest presented the first live opera radio broadcast, and six years later he announced the results of the presidential election in the first radio news broadcast.

Sources: Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96

© Phillip Bower