Lee de Forest
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The engineer who added a third electrode to a vacuum tube in 1906, producing the first device that could amplify a signal.
He built it as a detector and did not grasp what he had; its amplifying capability was only realised after 1912. Amplification is the property that made long-distance telephony, radio and eventually computing possible, because a signal that can be rebuilt at intervals can travel indefinitely - which is the same argument as a repeater, a regenerator and, later, a router. The pattern is worth marking: the inventor of the most consequential component of the era spent six years not understanding its most important property.
Also known as: de forest, deforest, audion, triode
Sources
- Lee de Forest and the triode: in 1906 he modified Fleming's diode by inserting a regulating grid between cathode and anode, naming it the Audion and intending it as a detector; its amplifying capabilities were realised after 1912
- US patents 841,387 in 1907 and 879,532 in 1908 for the grid Audion, the first triode vacuum tube, and the later disputes with Edwin Armstrong over regeneration