Autobiography of Lee De Forest
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Father of Radio THE autobiography OF Lee de Forest r9fo WilcoxFollett Co. CHICAGO EDITORS: Linton J. Keith Arthur Brogue DESIGNER: Stanford W. Williamson COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY Wilcox & Follett Co. Chicago, Ill. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the text may be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher, except brief quotations used in con- nection with reviews in magazines or newspapers. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Father of Radio I Dedication To my old comrades and associates in the forgotten days of Wireless -to my eager assistants in the early years of the Audion and of Radio- broadcasting-to the multitudes of young men and women who loved, as I have loved, the long night hours of listening to distant signals and far-off voices-to the keen engineers who hastened to grasp the new elec- tronic tools I laid before them, creating therewith a vast new universe- to the United States Navy, which was always prompt to use my new wireless and radio devices, whose operators heard my first radiobroadcast, and whose Admirals never failed to give me welcome encouragement when it was most sorely needed-to the United States Signal Corps, whose Chiefs and Officers have from the beginning continued to be friend and guide-to the Bell Laboratories engineers who first saw the worth of the Audion amplifier-to the radio announcers who must speak what is writ- ten though their hearts be not always therein-to the brilliant pioneers in our latest miracle of Television-to the partner of my earliest wireless ex- periments, E. W. Smythe, whose financial assistance, limited though it was, nevertheless made that beginning possible-to Max Stires, another friend in time of need-to all who have fought with or against me in the exciting battles of the patent field-and especially to the memory of those stalwart allies and firmest friends, grand old Captain Samuel E. Darby and his brilliant son, Samuel E. Darby, Jr. (both now departed)-TO ALL OF THESE this volume is devotedly dedicated. v Preface Having spent the first fifty years of this century making, and helping to make, radio and television history, it seems fitting that I should now relax a little and take time off from my still-busy round to record a bit of that history, together with such details of my per- sonal life as may be of interest to others. I do this in the hope that a frank revelation of my own struggles, disappointments, and successes may encourage others to embark on a similar career of discovery and invention. The opportunities today are just as great as they were at the start of our century. Perhaps the pitfalls and obstacles are also as great, though I believe the reader who follows my story to its end will agree that I have encountered more than the usual share of difficulties. Looking back, I realize that these difficulties are what made my life interesting-to me. I hope I have succeeded in making this ac- count of it as interesting to my readers! LEE DE FOREST April, 1950 vii Acknowledgments For their invaluable help during the years -long preparation of this volume I am deeply indebted to these three old friends: to George H. Clark, for much historical documentation for old photographs taken from his Radio Historical Library, and for his helpful sugges- tions and kind encouragement to proceed; to Hugo Gernsback, pio- neer editor of Journals covering the experimental radio field, for addi- tional material and help; and to my secretary, Alice Van Deusen Gazin, without whose untiring industry in typing and correlating the vast amount of material involved, the completion of this work would have been impossible. LEE DE FOREST viii Contents CHAPTER PAGE Introduction 1 I Family Origins 5 2 Alabama Childhood 15 3 Southern Upbringing 34 4 Talladega Youth 45 5 Mt. Hermon Days 55 6 Yale Undergraduate Years 64 7 Graduate Years 83 8 First Love 99 9 Beginning Wireless rlo io Ships Ahoy! 123 II Early Wireless Operators 136 12 1903-Historic Firsts 143 13 Wireless Goes to War 155 14 Early Litigation 159 15 Overland Wireless 163 16 Big Navy Wireless 173 17 Little Old New York 196 18 Crossing the Atlantic 201 19 Conception of the Audion 210 20 Crash of First Fortune-Founding of Second 216 21 Radio and Romance 222 ix PAGE CHAPTER 22 Radio Invades Europe 236 242 23 Radio Resurgent 24 Sadness and Joy 251 25 Opera by Radio 267 26 Radio Goes West 272 281 27 Collapse of Second Fortune 286 28 Palo Alto Again 29 A Lever to Move the World 290 Resurgent 300 30 Romance and Radio Gets a Bargain 304 31 The Telephone Company 32 The Audion No Swindle! 311 316 33 Starting a Third Fortune 328 34 Transcontinental Telephony 331 35 Radio in. New Roles 36 The Broadcasting Era Begins 336 37 A New Enchantment 345 38 Pioneering in Talking Pictures 358 367 39 Phono film Comes to Broadway 375 40 Historic Litigation 41 The Dam Goes Out-at Last 387 42 Phono film Fadeout 398 43 Marie Mosquini 408 412 44 Mountain Climbing 418 45 Early Television Work 46 Diathermy 423 47 For War and for Peace 427 48 Television 433 49 A Parent's Disappointment 441 452 50 A.R.R.L.-V.W.O.A.-I.R.E. 51 Finale 458 APPENDIX Poems 469 Evolution of the Audion 477 De Forest Patents -1902-1949 485 index 491 z Introduction I recall as though it happened but yesterday the thrill of significant achievement which possessed me on that sunny after- noon in early October, 1906, as I hurried to my laboratory carry- ing in my coat pocket the world's only supply of three -electrode vacuum tubes. They were just two in number, and I was eager to test them out to determine whether my latest invention- a tiny bent wire in the form of a grid inserted between the carbon filament and the platinum plate-was an improvement over my previous two -electrode detector; whether my new "grid Audion" could bring in wireless signals over substantially greater dis- tances than other receiving devices then in use. My eagerness grew with every step. To my excited delight I found that it did; the faint impulses which my short antenna brought to that new grid electrode sounded many times louder in the headphones than any wireless signal ever heard before. I was happy indeed. But I little realized that I held in my hand the long -sought Aladdin's lamp of our new world, "a lamp by which one might hear instead of read," a lamp which when rubbed by the hands of gifted engineers would swiftly summon gigantic Genii to do our bidding, and all but remake our world. Had I been gifted with clairvoyance, I could have seen in my little Audion a tiny acorn from which in time would grow a mighty oak with branches spreading to the farthest corners of the earth and even into the vastness of interstellar space. From I FATHER OF RADIO its trunk radiates worldwide communication by voice and code. Its leaves vibrate to the finest music that man has ever composed. From its lofty foliage straight radials reach through the dark- ened skies to guide the aviator safely to his goal. Like homing pigeons to its boughs come back its radar and sonar echoes to tell him, and sailors far at sea, their sure direction and most safe distance from mountain, rock, or shoal. Man has even fashioned great boughs of this tree into strange shape of weapons, mighty cudgels with which to fight wars and direct rockets, robot planes, and other death -dealing missiles to their targets. In every hospi- tal and doctor's office healing waves are radiated to the sick from its potent fruit. The weaving branches of this tree make strange patterns to solve in seconds complicated equations else requiring weeks of labored calculation; from its finer branches have already fallen billions of little "acorns" (some of them so called), countless improved varieties of that primal one from which the great tree sprouted. With the magical electron tube, the engineer can now command electrons to do his bidding. For the first time he has ahold of electricity itself, not just its manifestations. The electron tube enables the scientist to split the atom and measure the heat from stars infinitely distant, extending boundlessly man's knowl- edge of his universe. Already the thermionic tube is at work in a thousand industries. It will enter thousands more. Electronic devices control high- speed wrapping of packages, delicately fill bottles to the proper level, remove slate from coal at the mines, level elevators, open doors, detect smoke and fumes, measure vibrations and thick- ness. In uncounted factories electronic energy heats, welds, ce- ments, selects, and counts, saving man from limitless hours of tedious toil. A hundred technical institutes devote their resources to research and study in electronics. Many and emphatic are the authorities for these statements. 2 INTRODUCTION "When Dr. de Forest made the first electron tube he had in his hand the missing link in a great sequence of elemental revo- lutions in human history-something as wonderful as any of the great epochal discoveries in man's development, such as the mak- ing of fire; of bronze; of iron; of the wheel; of sailing vessels; of the telescope and the microscope; of the application of steam, electric and automotive power! The visible evidence is a still - growing 'I, ,000,000,000 a year electronics industry!" -From RCA booklet, Electronics in Industry, 1943 "Perhaps the most important event in the history of electronics [occurred] when a young experimenter named Lee de Forest inserted a third electrode in the form of a grid between the cath- ode and anode of a vacuum tube.