The "Edison Effect" laid the groundwork for the field of electronics. Thomas Edison must have felt deep pain in the guts of his stomach when he learnt of Lee De Forest Valve Amplifier (The Audion Tube). Although Lee De Forest made invented the Audion Tube, his industrial business practices and choice of commercial partners were perceived as failures. Almost every industrial venture he embarked on was predisposed to malfunction. This was to become a kind of highlighted trademark throughout his life. Nevertheless, in the year of 1912, he developed a feedback circuit, which would increase the output of a radio transmitter and produced sporadic current, but he never saw the worth of his discovery. By the time he had applied for a patent in 1915, another fellow by the name of Howard Armstrong saw what could be accomplished by the discovery and patented it quite rapidly. Howard Armstrong made his move before Lee De Forest could blink an eyelid. When Lee De Forest found out that someone else had claimed his discovery; he sued. The legal battle action lasted for almost two decades. That’s like being given two life sentences! Although he won his case he was not given the recognition for his work. The radio industry never accredited him; instead, Howard Armstrong was given the credit. That encumbrance did not perturb Lee De Forest; he continued diligently with his inventions and came up with the most strikingly important break through of his career as an inventor, an invention that was later to be adopted by the film industry. The use of electricity to improve sound recordings was succeeded in 1920 and this discovery led to the beginning of motion pictures with sound, but hardly anyone at that time was really interested. |
