Lee De Forest

Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor who was a pioneer in the development of radio communication. De Forest was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and educated at Yale University. He designed a number of the earliest wireless radio and telegraph transmitters. His most important invention, however, was a type of vacuum tube that De Forest called the audion, and which today is known as 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 1950s. 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. In 1923 he became the first to demonstrate sound on moving film (see History of Motion Pictures). De Forest patented more than 300 other electrical and electronic devices, including several in the field of sound motion pictures.