Lee De Forest:
The Visionary Who Brought Radio to Life
This article is an excerpt
from RUSC Member's Area
The inventor Lee De Forest was born on August 26, 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa to Henry Swift De Forest, a Church Minister.
Whilst still a boy, Lee's father moved the family from Iowa to Alabama and became the president of the College for the Colored in Talladega. Unfortunately for Lee, many of the white community resented the education of former slaves' children, resulting in him and his siblings being isolated at school and in their home community.
His father had hoped that he would follow in his footsteps and join the clergy, but as Lee's life had become more difficult and lonely, he found solace in Science, spending much of his spare time tinkering and inventing gadgets.
It was this, along with Guglielmo Marconi's long-distance radio transmission success in the late 1890s, which led to his discovery of the new and exciting field of radio, and his dream to be 'the one' who would make it possible to broadcast public radio, a wireless radio transmission, live across the airwaves.
Lee enrolled at Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School on a scholarship, and set about making this dream come true.
In 1906, he filed his first patent for an electronic amplifying vacuum tube he'd invented, describing it as a detector of sound, which he named the Audion. This inspired piece of equipment finally made live radio broadcasting possible, and it would go on to become the key component of all radio, long-distance telephone calls, radar, television, and even early computer systems.
In 1907, a Lee De Forest company advertisement said:
"It will soon be possible to distribute grand opera music from transmitters placed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House by a Radio Telephone station on the roof to almost any dwelling in Greater New York and vicinity... The same applies to large cities. Church music, lectures, etc., can be spread abroad by the Radio Telephone."
Lee De Forest's dream was realized on January 13, 1910, (one hundred and twelve years ago!) with the first-ever public radio broadcast. It was an experimental transmission of a live performance at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, and the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso's strong voice crackled across the airwaves. The transmission is considered to be the birth of public radio broadcasts, and it was credited to Lee De Forest, with the New York Times reporting on January 14, 1910:
"Opera broadcast in part from the stage of the New York City Metropolitan Opera Company was heard on January 13, 1910, when Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn sang arias from Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, which were "trapped and magnified by the dictograph directly from the stage and borne by wireless Hertzian waves over the turbulent waters of the sea to transcontinental and coastwise ships and over the mountainous peaks and undulating valleys of the country." The microphone was connected by telephone wire to the laboratory of Dr. Lee De Forest."
This first-ever broadcast was heard by those at De Forest's radio laboratory, on board ships in New York Harbor, as well as in large hotels on Times Square and several New York City locations for the press.
Between 1910 and 1920, he improved his Audion and launched several radio stations, broadcasting some of the first entertainment radio shows to listeners across the country. He then progressed to working on a system that could record soundtracks onto strips of film, producing motion pictures with sound, and is credited with being the creator of 'talkies' - or the motion picture movies which we are so familiar with today.
Although he never reached the heights of wealth and success that he'd envisaged as a young man, Lee De Forest was presented with several awards in his later years, recognizing his contributions to the early electronics age.
There aren't many radio broadcasts dating back to the 1920s, but a few in the RUSC collection include:
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Will Rogers (1923)
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Sam and Henry (1926)
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Guy Lombardo Orchestra (1927)
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Amos and Andy (1929)
There is also a story called "History Of The First Regular Radio Broadcast" from the Adventures in Research radio series, about the radio broadcast of the presidential election returns on November 2, 1920.
I'm sure you'll all agree with me that if it weren't for Lee De Forest, the golden age of radio might never have happened. So, thank you, Sir! Your inventions have given us all so much listening pleasure over the years, and hopefully for many, many more years into the future.
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