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Lee de Forest

Lee de Forest (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor and a fundamentally important early pioneer in electronics. He invented the first practical electronic amplifier, the three-element "Audion" triode vacuum tube in 1906. This helped start the Electronic Age, and enabled the development of the electronic oscillator. These made radio broadcasting and long distance telephone lines possible, and led to the development of talking motion pictures, among countless other applications.

Lee de Forest

(1873-08-26)August 26, 1873

June 30, 1961(1961-06-30) (aged 87)

Inventor

Three-electrode vacuum-tube (Audion), sound-on-film recording (Phonofilm)

Lucille Sheardown
(m. 1906; div. 1906)
(m. 1908; div. 1911)
Mary Mayo
(m. 1912; div. 1923)
(m. 1930)

Calvert DeForest (grandnephew)

He had over 300 patents worldwide, but also a tumultuous career – he boasted that he made, then lost, four fortunes. He was also involved in several major patent lawsuits, spent a substantial part of his income on legal bills, and was even tried (and acquitted) for mail fraud.


Despite this, he was recognised for his pioneering work with the 1922 IEEE Medal of Honor, the 1923 Franklin Institute Elliott Cresson Medal and the 1946 American Institute of Electrical Engineers Edison Medal.

Early life[edit]

Lee de Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the son of Anna Margaret (née Robbins) and Henry Swift DeForest.[1][2] He was a direct descendant of Jessé de Forest, the leader of a group of Walloon Huguenots who fled Europe in the 17th century due to religious persecution.


De Forest's father was a Congregational Church minister who hoped his son would also become a pastor. In 1879 the elder de Forest became president of the American Missionary Association's Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, a school "open to all of either sex, without regard to sect, race, or color", and which educated primarily African-Americans. Many of the local white citizens resented the school and its mission, and Lee spent most of his youth in Talladega isolated from the white community, with several close friends among the black children of the town.


De Forest prepared for college by attending Mount Hermon Boys' School in Gill, Massachusetts, for two years, beginning in 1891. In 1893, he enrolled in a three-year course of studies at Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School in New Haven, Connecticut, on a $300 per year scholarship that had been established for relatives of David de Forest. Convinced that he was destined to become a famous—and rich—inventor, and perpetually short of funds, he sought to interest companies with a series of devices and puzzles he created, and expectantly submitted essays in prize competitions, all with little success.


After completing his undergraduate studies, in September 1896 de Forest began three years of postgraduate work. However, his electrical experiments had a tendency to blow fuses, causing building-wide blackouts. Even after being warned to be more careful, he managed to douse the lights during an important lecture by Professor Charles S. Hastings, who responded by having de Forest expelled from Sheffield.


With the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, de Forest enrolled in the Connecticut Volunteer Militia Battery as a bugler, but the war ended and he was mustered out without ever leaving the state. He then completed his studies at Yale's Sloane Physics Laboratory, earning a Doctorate in 1899 with a dissertation on the "Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires", supervised by theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs.[3]

Charter member, in 1912, of the (IRE).

Institute of Radio Engineers

Received the 1922 IRE , in "recognition for his invention of the three-electrode amplifier and his other contributions to radio".[64]

Medal of Honor

Awarded the 1923 Elliott Cresson Medal for "inventions embodied in the Audion".

Franklin Institute

Received the 1946 Edison Medal, "For the profound technical and social consequences of the grid-controlled vacuum tube which he had introduced".

American Institute of Electrical Engineers

Oscar presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1960, in recognition of "his pioneering inventions which brought sound to the motion picture".[65]

Honorary Academy Award

Honored February 8, 1960, with a star on the .[66]

Hollywood Walk of Fame

was originally named the De Forest Training School by its founder Dr. Herman A. De Vry, who was a friend and colleague of de Forest.

DeVry University

Lucille Sheardown in February 1906. Divorced before the end of the year.

[67]

(1883–1971) on February 14, 1908. They had a daughter, Harriet, but were separated by 1909 and divorced in 1912.[68][69]

Nora Stanton Blatch Barney

Mary Mayo White (1891–1957), stage name Mary Mayo, in December 1912. According to census records, in 1920 they were living with their infant daughter, Deena (born c. 1919); divorced October 5, 1930 (per Los Angeles Times). Mayo died December 30, 1957, in a fire in Los Angeles.

[70]

(1899–1983) on October 10, 1930; Mosquini was a silent film actress, and they remained married until his death in 1961.[71]

Marie Mosquini

"I discovered an Invisible Empire of the Air, intangible, yet solid as granite."

[75]

"I foresee great refinements in the field of short-pulse microwave signaling, whereby several simultaneous programs may occupy the same channel, in sequence, with incredibly swift electronic communication. [...] Short waves will be generally used in the kitchen for roasting and baking, almost instantaneously." – 1952

[76]

"So I repeat that while theoretically and technically television may be feasible, yet commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility; a development of which we need not waste little time in dreaming." – 1926

[77]

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of . I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." – 1957[78]

Jules Verne

"I do not foresee 'spaceships' to the moon or Mars. Mortals must live and die on Earth or within its atmosphere!" – 1952

[76]

"As a growing competitor to the tube amplifier comes now the Bell Laboratories’ transistor, a three-electrode germanium crystal of amazing amplification power, of wheat-grain size and low cost. Yet its frequency limitations, a few hundred , and its strict power limitations will never permit its general replacement of the Audion amplifier." – 1952[76]

kilocycles

"I came, I saw, I invented—it's that simple—no need to sit and think—it's all in your imagination."

De Forest was given to expansive predictions, many of which were not borne out, but he also made many correct predictions, including microwave communication and cooking.

"Wireless Signaling Device" (directional antenna), filed December 1902, issued January 1904;

U.S. patent 748,597

"Oscillation Responsive Device" (vacuum tube detector diode), filed January 1906, issued June 1906;

U.S. patent 824,637

"Wireless Telegraph System" (separate transmitting and receiving antennas), filed December 1905, issued July 1906;

U.S. patent 827,523

"Wireless Telegraph System," filed January 1906 issued July 1906;

U.S. patent 827,524

"Oscillation Responsive Device" (vacuum tube detector – no grid), filed May 1906, issued November 1906;

U.S. patent 836,070

"Wireless Telegraphy" (tunable vacuum tube detector – no grid), filed August 1906, issued January 1907;

U.S. patent 841,386

"Device for Amplifying Feeble Electrical Currents" (...), filed August 1906, issued January 1907;

U.S. patent 841,387

"Wireless Telegraph Transmitting System" (antenna coupler), filed May 1904, issued January 1908;

U.S. patent 876,165

"Space Telegraphy" (increased sensitivity detector – clearly shows grid), filed January 1907, issued February 18, 1908;

U.S. patent 879,532

"Wireless Telegraphy";

U.S. patent 926,933

"Wireless Telegraph Tuning Device";

U.S. patent 926,934

"Wireless Telegraph Transmitter," filed February 1906, issued July 1909;

U.S. patent 926,935

"Space Telegraphy";

U.S. patent 926,936

"Space Telephony";

U.S. patent 926,937

"Oscillation Responsive Device" (parallel plates in Bunsen flame) filed February 1905, issued December 1910;

U.S. patent 979,275

"Transmission of Music by Electromagnetic Waves";

U.S. patent 1,025,908

"Wireless Telegraphy" (directional antenna/direction finder), filed June 1906, issued June 1914;

U.S. patent 1,101,533

"Wireless Telegraphy."

U.S. patent 1,214,283

Patent images in TIFF format

Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts

Robert von Lieben

Adams, Mike. Lee de Forest: king of radio, television, and film (Springer Science & Business Media, 2011).

Adams, Mike. "Lee de Forest and the Invention of Sound Movies, 1918–1926" The AWA Review (vol. 26, 2013).

Aitken, , Hugh G. J. The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900–1932 (1985).

De Forest, Lee. Father of radio: the autobiography of Lee de Forest' (Wilcox & Follett, 1950).

Chipman, Robert A. "De Forest and the Triode Detector" Scientific American, March 1965, pp. 93–101.

Hijiya, James A. Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio (Lehigh UP, 1992).

Lubell, Samuel. "'Magnificent Failure'" Saturday Evening Post, three parts: January 17, 1942 (pp. 9–11, 75–76, 78, 80), January 24, 1942 (pp. 20–21, 27–28, 38, and 43), and January 31, 1942 (pp. 27, 38, 40–42, 46, 48–49).

Tyne, Gerald E. J. (Howard W. Sams and Company, 1977). Tyne was a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution. Details de Forest's activities from the invention of the Audion to 1930.

Saga of the Vacuum Tube

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio by a PBS Documentary Video 1992. Focuses on three of the individuals who made significant contributions to the early radio industry in the United States: De Forest, David Sarnoff and Edwin Armstrong. LINK Archived 2018-12-06 at the Wayback Machine

Ken Burns

(leedeforest.com)

Lee de Forest, American Inventor

at IMDb

Lee de Forest

(ethw.org)

Lee de Forest biography

at National Inventors Hall of Fame

Lee de Forest biography

on YouTube

A Few Moments with Eddie Cantor (1923) (De Forest Phonofilm Sound Movie)

by Stephen Greene, Mass Comm Review, February 1991.

"Who said Lee de Forest was the 'Father of Radio'?"

by A. B. Cole, Sales Manager – De Forest Radio Tel. & Tel. Co., QST, March 1916, pp. 41–44. (wikisource.org)

"Practical Pointers on the Audion"

" by Sungook Hong, Seoul National University (PDF)

"A History of the Regeneration Circuit: From Invention to Patent Litigation

(1924) (shorpy.com)

"De Forest Phonofilm Co. Inc. on White House grounds"

at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center

Guide to the Lee De Forest Papers 1902–1953