[BC] Lee de Forest

[Donna Halper]

On 6/25/2012 12:04 PM, RichardBJohnson at comcast.net wrote:
> 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.
>    

Or not.  The problem is that it's really difficult to know who did what 
first.  As we have seen with the myth of KDKA as the first station in 
[pick one] the US, North America, the entire world, history is written 
by the winners.  (Note to broadcast history books:  8MK/WWJ was on the 
air before KDKA, and XWA in Montreal was on the air before both of 
them.)  DeForest had a number of proponents, plus he himself was a 
relentless self-promoter, which you had to be back in those days; 
inventors understood that the average person had no clue about their 
work unless they could get the press to be very excited.  Fessenden was 
a relentless self-promoter too, and so was Marconi.  They all 
exaggerated their very real achievements to get some additional 
publicitity.  And yes, it's well-known that like many in his day 
(including Fessenden), DeForest held some rather bigoted views about 
blacks, Jews, women, etc.  But while I cringe at some of what he said, 
it is undeniable that he was indeed an important inventor.  The question 
is:  how important compared to others working on similar stuff?  That 
said, I agree with Barry that our friend Mike Adams did a very 
creditable job analyzing DeForest's career.