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De Forest's interest in wireless telegraphy led to his invention of the Audion tube in 1906, and he developed an improved wireless telegraph receiver. At that time, he was a member of the faculty at the Armour Institute of Technology, now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. He filed a patent for a two-electrode device for detecting electromagnetic waves. His Audion tube, a three-electrode device (plate, cathode, control grid), was a vacuum tube which allowed for amplification for radio reception.
De Forest moved to San Francisco in 1910, and worked for the Federal Telegraph Company, which began developing the first global radio communications system in 1912.
The United States Attorney General sued De Forest for fraud (in 1913) on behalf of his shareholders, stating that his claim of regeneration was an "absurd" promise (he was later acquitted). Nearly bankrupt with legal bills, De Forest sold his triode vacuum-tube patent to AT&T and the Bell System in 1913 for the bargain price of $50,000.
De Forest filed another patent in 1916 that became the cause of a contentious lawsuit with the prolific inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong, whose patent for the regenerative circuit had been issued in 1914. The lawsuit lasted twelve years, winding its way through the appeals process and ending up before the Supreme Court in 1926. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of De Forest, although the view of many historians is that the judgment was incorrect.
In 1916, De Forest broadcast the first radio advertisements (for his own products) and the first Presidential election report by radio in November of 1916 for Charles Evans Hughes and Woodrow Wilson. A few months later, DeForest moved his tube transmitter to High Bridge, New York.
Just like Pittsburgh’s KDKA four years later in 1920, DeForest used the Hughes/Wilson presidential election returns for his broadcast. The New York American installed a private wire and bulletins were sent out every hour. About 2000 listeners heard The Star-Spangled Banner and other anthems, songs, and hymns. DeForest went on to sponsor radio broadcasts of music, featuring opera star Enrico Caruso and many other events, but he received little financial backing.
In 1919, De Forest filed the first patent on his sound-on-film process, which improved on the work of Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt, and called it the De Forest Phonofilm process. It recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back into sound waves when the movie was projected. This system, which synchronized sound directly onto film, was used to record stage performances (such as in vaudeville), speeches, and musical acts. De Forest established his De Forest Phonofilm Corporation, but he could interest no one in Hollywood in his invention at that time.
De Forest premiered 18 short films made in Phonofilm on April 15, 1923, at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. He was forced to show his films in independent theaters such as the Rivoli, since the movie studios controlled all major theater chains. De Forest chose to film primarily vaudeville acts, not features, limiting the appeal of his process. De Forest also worked with Theodore Case, using Case's patents to perfect the Phonofilm system. However, the two men had a falling out, and Case took his patents to studio head William Fox, owner of Fox Film Corporation, who then perfected the Fox Movietone process. Shortly before the Phonofilm Company filed for bankruptcy in September 1926, Hollywood introduced a different method for the "talkies", the sound-on-disc process used by Warner Brothers as Vitaphone.
Eventually Hollywood came back to the sound-on-film methods De Forest had originally proposed, such as Fox Movietone and RCA Photophone. Almost 200 short films were made in the Phonofilm process.
For De Forest's initially rejected, but later adopted, movie soundtrack method, he was given an Academy Award in 1959/1960 for "his pioneering inventions
He died in Hollywood in 1961 and was interred in San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
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Posted August 26 , 2007
Although he only lived in Iowa for a few years, his birth in Council Bluffs on August 26, 1873, gives the state claim to Lee De Forest, one of the fathers of the electronics age. His development of the Audion, a vacuum tube that amplifies weak electrical signals, allowed for the widespread use of electronics.
Although De Forest is credited with more than 300 patented inventions, he spent a fortune on legal bills during his life. He was married four times, oversaw several failed companies, was defrauded by business partners and was acquitted of mail fraud charges.
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Inventor DeForest claimed Iowa roots
De Forest was born on August 26, 1873, in Council Bluffs to Henry Swift De Forest and Ana Robbins. His father was a Congregational minister and harbored hopes at his son grew up that he would follow in his footsteps. When Henry De Forest became president of Talladega College, a traditionally African American school, the family moved to Alabama.
De Forest went to Mount Hermon School, and then he enrolled at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University in 1893. As an inquisitive inventor, he tapped into the electrical system at Yale one evening and completely blacked out the campus, leading to his suspension. However, he was eventually allowed to complete his studies. He paid some of his tuition with income from mechanical and gaming inventions, and he received his Bachelor's degree in 1896. He remained at Yale for graduate studies, and earned his Ph.D. in 1899 with a doctoral dissertation on radio waves.
Lee De Forest
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