[BC] Leonard Kahn

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Extremely wrong in all respects.

Lee De Forest had 180 patents, all pertaining to the development of radio, television, and sound-on-film. Many of his patents were original, i.e., not improvements advancing the state-of-the-air, but represented original thinking that is now called "out-of-the-box." He is the guy who put the grid in an Edison Valve, thus creating the "Audion," that amplified weak signals and made radio possible. He is also the guy who added other grids until eventually the "hexagrid converter" was one of his creations. This was used in the "all American 5-tube" radio that was an industry standard for thirty years.

Early on, the amplification of signals as De Forest demonstrated, was considered by mathematicians and physicists as impossible. These were his main detractors. They would not accept that if a grid was negatively-charged with respect to the electron source, it would not acquire an electron flow, therefore it did not require any input (grid) power to control output (plate) power. This was considered impossible by physicists who spent large sums of money denigrating the inventor and classifying him as a kook.

There seems to give a fair treatment in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest However, if you read its "Talk" page, you can read the virtiol of his detractors even to this day.

Eventially Victor Radio Company, later to become RCA purchased licenses to his patents because they worked.

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: "James B. Potter" <jpotter at jpotter.com>

JimT:

If you read the life history of Lee DeForest -- self-proclaimed Father of
Radio --  the comparisons are strikingly similar.  A cantankerous old coot.....