Lee De Forest

Lee de Forest born August 26 1873 Council Bluffs Iowa USdied June 30 1961 Hollywood California American inventor of the Audion vacuum tube which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component of all radio telephone radar television and computer systems before the invention of the transistor in 1947 Although de Forest was bitter over the financial exploitation of his inventions by others he was widely honoured as the father of radio and the grandfather of television He was supported strongly but unsuccessfully for the Nobel Prize for Physics