Lee De Forest Facts
Lee De Forest Facts
|
| Interesting Lee De Forest Facts: |
|---|
| De Forest's father was a Congregational minister and while Lee was a boy, moved the family to rural Talladega, Alabama where he became president of the Negro college there. |
| As a boy, Lee invented several mechanical devices including a miniature blast furnace. |
| In 1893 he enrolled in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and in 1899 he earned his PhD in physics. |
| He was interested in the study of electromagnetic-wave propagation and wrote his doctoral thesis on "Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires." |
| His first job was with the Western Electric Company where he worked in the experimental laboratory and, working on his own time, developed a successful electrolytic Hertzian wave detector. |
| In 1902 he founded the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company and gave public demonstrations of wireless telegraphy. |
| In 1907 he patented the Audion which was a thermionic grid-triode vacuum tube capable of transmitting speech and music wirelessly. |
| In 1910 he broadcast a live performance from the Metropolitan Opera in New York to advertise his new invention. |
| In 1912 he successfully amplified a weak signal by cascading a series of Audion tubes which was a critical step in the development of both the radio and long-distance wireless communication. |
| He also discovered that he could cause a self-generating oscillation that could be fed through an antenna to strengthen the signal further. |
| In 1920 he developed a sound-on-film optical recording system that was demonstrated between 1923 and 1927 but the poor quality of the system made it technically impractical. |
| During the 1930's he invented Audion-diathermy machines for medical use. |
| He lacked business skills and, after he was defrauded several times by his partners, he sold most of his patents cheaply to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. |
|
Related Links: Facts Scientists Facts Animals Facts |