De Forest, Lee, 1873-1961

Biography

Lee de Forest (1873-1961) served as a faculty member at Lewis Institute and conducted radio broadcast experiments at the Armour Institute of Technology at the turn of the twentieth century. During that time he conducted his first long-distance broadcasts from the roof of Main Building on Armour Institute's campus. He invented the Audion three-element vacuum tube; the resulting tube amplified electric signals and served as a fast-switching element that later would be used in digital electronics. De Forest also patented a method of recording sound on film that the movie industry would later adopt.

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