- Lee de Forest routinely called himself
the Father of Radio.
It was even the title of his autobiography.
And in a way, he was right.
He invented the idea of radio broadcasting.
He conducted some of the first radio broadcasts
and he even invented the most important device
in all of radio, the vacuum triode or the vacuum tube.
However, he did this
because he outright stole most of his ideas.
Ready for this crazy story?
Let's go.
- [Announcer] Electricity, electricity,
electricity, electricity.
- Lee de Forest is a roue, a cad, a thief,
and yet, probably the man most responsible
for bringing radio broadcasting to the American public.
- Lee de Forest grew up in the 1870s in Alabama
to a stern preacher from the North.
He was a lonely child, small and homely,
ignored and abused by his family and neighbors.
He was always tinkering around with things.
In his teens, he thought
he invented a perpetual motion machine,
which convinced him that he was a genius,
a feeling that never faltered.
In college, he wrote in his journal that, quote,
"I never doubt for a moment my genius."
In his late seventies, he even tried
to convince his fourth wife
to write a book called, "I Married a Genius".
When he was 23, de Forest read a book about the Tesla coil
and became fascinated with electricity and wireless.
In fact, he became the first person
to get his PhD in the study of radio waves.
After trying and failing to get a job with Tesla
and then Marconi, Lee de Forest got together
with a man named Abraham White to create their own company,
the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company.
White thought it was the perfect vehicle
to use de Forest's enthusiasm to oversell stock
to the American public, and de Forest agreed,
writing in his diary, quote,
"Soon, we believe, the suckers will begin to bite."
And bite they did.
Soon the company had over a million dollars.
De Forest and White's major competition
was from Marconi's wireless, and Marconi's biggest weakness
was how they received signals.
See, Marconi used a coherer that was slow and erratic.
De Forest created a solution that he called
the goo anti-coherer, based on some German ideas,
which worked about as well as it sounded,
meaning not well at all.
Then, in 1903, de Forest visited a man
named Reginald Fessenden and found a better detector
in Fessenden's laboratory.
Soon, with the help of a Fessenden employee
that de Forest lured to his company, Lee de Forest
started selling a responder that was identical
to Fessenden's electrolytic detector
in all but name and quality.
Not surprisingly, Fessenden sued.
While the lawsuit raged on, de Forest and White
went to a world's fair in St. Louis.
They constructed a 30-foot tower to promote their business.
While in St. Louis, de Forest heard a talk
from a Danish man named Valdemar Poulsen about a new type
of radio transmitter called an arc transmitter,
where you used an arc lamp to amplify the signal
and create smooth radio waves.
Poulsen said you could use his new device to send sound
wirelessly, an idea very intriguing to Lee de Forest.
Now sending sound through radio waves
was not a new idea in 1904.
Reginald Fessenden, the guy suing de Forest
for borrowing a detector, had transferred sound
with radio waves way back in 1900,
although the quality wasn't very good.
By 1904, Fessenden was working on an alternator,
or a machine where you spun electromagnets very, very fast
to make smooth radio waves for this very purpose.
By the way, he succeeded in 1906
with, quote, "perfect fidelity".
However, Fessenden and Poulsen and almost everyone else
was thinking of sending sound wirelessly
to make a wireless telephone, not to make broadcast radio.
Lee de Forest thought of it immediately.
He predicted that, quote, "Someday the news
"and even advertising will be sent out all over wireless."
De Forest tried to get his business partner
interested in sending sound wirelessly
with the Poulsen arc transmitter.
He wasn't interested in using Fessenden's alternator
because it was too difficult for him to copy
or independently invent.
And besides, Fessenden would probably no longer
let de Forest into his laboratory or near his employees.
However, White was uninterested,
as wireless telegraph was raking in the cash.
However, two years later, in 1906, Fessenden won his suit.
De Forest ran to Canada
so that White could creatively rearrange their finances,
which he did by backstabbing de Forest,
as well as Fessenden, and destroying de Forest's company.
De Forest was devastated.
He wrote, quote, "This is the funeral
"of my first born child, stolen by a robber
"who has fattened off my brain,
"but my work goes on while I live."
Broke but determined, de Forest started anew with his idea
of wireless transmission of sound and a new company,
the De Forest Radio Telephone Company,
with a new president, James Dunlop Smith,
who used it to, you guessed it, oversell stock.
Lee de Forest then invented a crude carbon arc transmitter
which was a Poulsen generator with a microphone attached.
Of course, he never purchased the rights
to Poulsen's transmitter and went with the vague idea
that he came up with it on his own
and that his was significantly different.
But the major difference was it wasn't as good.
By January 7th of 1907, de Forest managed
to transmit speech wirelessly across his laboratory,
and from then on, he pretended
he was the first person to do so.
By February, Lee de Forest was broadcasting signals
miles away from his laboratory.
In fact, a Brooklyn naval officer called him up
and said, quote, "Am I drunk or crazy?
"Are you sending out some talk and music
"over that wireless of yours?"
In 1908, de Forrest married a female engineer
named Nora Stanton Blatch, and de Forest and his new bride
used their wireless to transmit music
from the top of the Eiffel Tower on their honeymoon.
In the beginning of 1910, Lee de Forest
even made the first live broadcast
of an opera from the stage.
It seemed like Lee de Forest would be at the forefront
of the broadcasting revolution.
However, his radio sounded terrible.
His marriage fell apart, as he didn't want his wife to work,
and by 1912, his company was charged with fraud.
By January 1, 1914, two members of de Forest's company
were charged with stealing over $1 million.
When de Forest was acquitted on a technicality,
he collapsed into his lawyers arms.
Although he personally did not lead the way into radio,
surprisingly one of his devices did.
See, way back in 1906, when de Forest
was losing his first company to a lawsuit to Fessenden,
he became interested in borrowing someone else's detector
that was based on a light bulb called a Fleming valve.
After failing with a direct copy,
de Forest made a new version of the Fleming valve
by adding stray pieces of metal all over the place
to make it his.
In 1907, de Forest filed for a patent
for something he called an Audion
that was a Fleming valve plus a zigzag of wire.
That little wire ended up making all the difference,
and the Audion that was renamed the triode
or the vacuum tube became one of the most important devices
in the 20th century.
- Here in my hand is the first radio tube,
the miracle seed from which sprang the entire,
mighty structure of radio and television, sonar, radar,
talking pictures, guided missiles, automation,
the electric brain computer
and long distance telephone communication.
- However, de Forest wasn't the one to figure it out.
How a college student named Howard Armstrong
transformed the world with a jacked up light bulb
is next time on The Secret History of Electricity.
- [Announcer] Electricity, electricity,
electricity, electricity.
- Thanks for watching my video.
Please remember to give it a nice thumbs up.
If you're interested in Fessenden
and how his electrolytic detector worked
and how he created the first radio waves
that transmitted sound, I have a video about that.
If you are interested in the Poulsen transmitter
and how that worked, I have a video about that.
And of course, check out the one about the vacuum tube.
It's gonna be a good one.
Okay. Have a good day.
(soft gentle music)