Lee de Forest, (born August 26, 1873, Council Bluffs, Iowa, U.S.—died 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.
