As a child deForest loved anything mechanical. He tinkered with machines, and as a teen was building miniaturized blast furnaces and locomotives, and also devised a silverplating mechanism.
deForest studied at Yale University, and did his dissertation on high-frequency oscillation effects in parallel wires. It was one of the first treatises on radio waves and explored the possibilities of wireless communication.
His
first job was with Western Electric Company in Chicago, where he started
in the telephone department and then moved on to work in the
experimental laboratory.
In 1907 saw the launch of the DeForest Radio Company. An early company advertisement stated: "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."
For the next ten+ years deForest broadcasted from points all over the world, popularizing radio to the point that by the 1920's many U.S. homes had their own "radio sets."
Lee
deForest also was a strong writer, frequently contributing to scientific
journals or electronics publications. In 1950, he wrote an
autobiography called "Father of Radio." He also wrote several film
scripts, hundreds of poems, and kept a daily journal. deForest died in 1961
and was inducted into
the
Radio Hall
of Fame in 1989.
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