Lee DeForest
Lee De Forest, (Iowa, August 26, 1873 - Hollywood, June 30, 1961), was an American inventor with approximately 300 registered patents, including the triode, the first amplifier device and origin of the subsequent development of Electronics based on vacuum tubes.
Biography
De Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, but grew up in Talladega, Alabama, where his father, a religious minister, had been sent to reorganize a black school. It was a lonely place for young Lee; deprived of the usual youthful relationships, he had plenty of time to read. His father intervened directly in the boy's education, hoping to guide him to a religious vocation.
However, Lee preferred science and displayed a great aptitude for it, building batteries and motors that were of professional quality. At Yale's Sheffield School of Science he received encouragement from him, and remained there until receiving his doctorate in 1899.
Throughout his life, he created one potentially lucrative idea after another, but a lack of business acumen prevented him from cashing in on the fruit of his genius. Excessive growth of the company he had created eventually led to bankruptcy, but De Forest quickly recovered.
The young inventor married in 1908, though he had a busy honeymoon. He with his wife went to Paris, and there he installed a telephone transmitter on top of the Eiffel Tower. Upon his return to the United States, he was besieged by requests for his inventions from people from all walks of life. He built antennas on the roofs of skyscrapers and installed his electronic sound amplification equipment (microphones) in theaters and the Metropolitan Opera House.
Idea after idea poured out of de Forest's prolific brain. Among his many inventions, he obtained patents for a scalpel, the high-frequency oscillator circuit, the radiotelephone, radio transmission and reception systems, train communication systems, a loudspeaker, the photoelectric cell, the movie camera soundproofing and a television and color television set.
On April 15, 1923, he showed his Phonofilm system for synchronizing sound in motion pictures at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. In this demonstration to the public and the press, a total of 18 short films of various lengths and themes were screened. Despite not being a film, it is considered the first synchronized sound film in history. However, the critics present praised the novelty but expressed negative opinions regarding the sound quality.
But it was in 1906 that De Forest invented the triode. De Forest's goal was to discover a method to amplify waves and at the same time control the volume of sound. He constructed a thin strip of platinum wire (to which he gave the name "grid"), bent it in a zigzag fashion, and placed it between the filament and the plate. Afterward, he encased the entire apparatus in a glass bulb.
Because of the invention of the Triode and the technological revolution that it created, he is considered the Father of Electronics, since before the Triode, electronics was basically limited to converting alternating current into direct current or continuous, that is, only power supplies were built. However, with the creation of the Vacuum Triode, came the amplification of all kinds of signals, especially audio, radio, TV, and numerous other inventions. This caused the industry of these equipment to have such a great upturn that already in the decade after 1930 the word of "Electronics" was coined for the first time. to refer to the technology of these emerging equipment.
Twisting a thin piece of wire and inserting it into a light bulb would hardly be considered a world-shattering incident; however, that is literally what Lee De Forest did when he invented the triode, which is now considered one of the twenty most important inventions in human history for its role in the origin of electronics.
In 1908, he transmitted phonograph music from the Eiffel Tower, reaching a distance of 800 kilometers, and already in 1910 he made the first transmission of a live opera.
Legacy
The Audion grid, which de Forest called "my greatest invention," and the vacuum tubes developed from it, dominated the field of electronics for forty years, making long-term telephone service possible. distance, radio transmission, television and many other applications. It could also be used as an electronic switching element, and was later used in early digital electronics, including early electronic computers, although the 1948 invention of the transistor would lead to microchips that eventually supplanted vacuum tube technology. For this reason, de Forest has been called one of the founders of the "electronic age".
According to Donald Beaver, his intense desire to overcome his childhood shortcomings explains his independence, self-confidence, and inventiveness. He displayed a strong desire to achieve, to overcome difficulties, and to pursue a career of invention. "He possessed the qualities of the traditional handyman-inventor: visionary faith, self-confidence, perseverance, the capacity for sustained hard work."
De Forest's files were donated by his widow to the Perham Electronic Foundation, which in 1973 opened the Foothills Electronics Museum at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. In 1991, the university closed the museum, breaking its contract. The foundation won a lawsuit and was awarded $775,000. The holdings were stored for twelve years, before being acquired in 2003 by History San José and exhibited as The Perham Collection of Early Electronics.
Eponymy
- The De Forest lunar crater carries this name in his memory.