Talk:Lee de Forest

message: I removed this until someone can provide a source. 
However, it should be noted that De Forest actually, only developed a rough idea for this and that the system was actually created by Auburn, NY native Theodore Case who is now credited by many as being the true inventer of sound on film and therefore, many talking movies. Deforest, just as he did with the F.M. radio pretty much stole the idea and took all credit for it.
Arniep 21:16, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unsourced addition

message: It does not do much good to post raw numbers for people who do not have TIFF software that can display US Patent images.  DeForest is credited with many patents, and only the most important ones should be listed in the article. Please post bare numbers here so they can be evaluated for inclusion. If the intention is to list all of his patents, they would be better stored at Wikimedia, which is designed to archive such non-contextual data.  --Blainster 17:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WP must serve all its users.  If you wish to continue to post patents, please also list some basic information such as title, date, and subject along with the number.  (Or are you unable to view them?) --Blainster 19:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: DeForest patents

message: The first version of the Audion was a diode developed in 1906. It was not until a year later that DeForest came up with the triode version, which most people are referring to when they use the term.  He used the same name for both types of tubes, which can be confusing. --Blainster 14:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Audion tube

message: I recently watched "Empire of the Air", a Ken Burns documentary.
Lots of DeForest information in there that definitely makes one think the introductory paragraph of this article should probably not be so pro-deforest but more independent.  One point was that during testimony he couldnt explain how some of his inventions worked, not really knowing, just copying others' work, adding stuff, "hey, it did something!" and patenting it.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/
My Dad was the youngest & last employee hired at DeForest Labs. His name was Edward Henry Scott. He passed on several years ago. I grew up around Craig Kregbaum and Harold Wolf, early employees who worked with Dr. DeForest (or de Forest if you prefer). I suspect that Doc DeForest as he was known in my family chose to convert his name to DeForest for purposes of the company name, thinking that "de" was not a good way to start a company name. Everyone who worked for DeForest Labs had good things to say about Doc. His employees were very loyal to Doc. As far as I know Ken Burns never contacted anyone who actually worked for DeForest Labs when he made the PBS documentary. My Dad saw the Ken Burns' documentary as was a little offended by it pointing out that it seemed to paint an overly glowing picture of Armstrong, who as he said beat his wife with fire irons and ultimately jumped out of a window. FM was a very significant invention, but Armstrong was no great work as a human being. 
Having known guys like Kregbaum who built very early tubes for DeForest used before and during WWI, I'd have to say that much of conjecture about "invention of the tube" presupposes that you needed to be fully conversant in theory of electronics in order to invent anything. Well, the fact was that electronic theory didn't yet exist. Kregbaum was fantastically talented inventor. I don't think he had any college but he invented and built many clever things. That was the nature of the times. They were tinkerers and fabricators of new gizmos, not teaching electronics courses at the university. They lived and breathed radio. I do not mean to disparage Ken Burns or his documentary on early day radio. I am actually a very big fan of most of what Ken Burns has accomplished. I think maybe though the PBS documentary treated Doc DeForest less favorably than my Dad felt about him or than learned from those early guys like Craig Kregbaum and Harold Wolf. They would not have known Doc as he was portrayed in the PBS documentary. Nobody I ever met who worked at DeForest Lab ever had anything bad to say about Doc. He was much loved by those who worked for him. That is at least something Armstrong could not claim I suspect.
My Dad went on to work as the Radio Officer for the City of Glendale, California where he put in the first microwave communications system for police and fire departments. As a result of doing that, both Motorola and RCA wanted to hire him as a systems engineer despite the fact that he had gone to college during the Great Depression and had to drop out after only one year because there was no money for college. He first went to work for Motorola but eventually switched to RCA where he enjoyed doing systems engineering in 2-way radio systems. Working with RCA factory engineers they solved many difficult 2-way radio problems at places like Scripps Institute of Oceanography and open pit copper mines. My Dad passed on several years ago.
Doc DeForest wrote a book on his own life and accomplishments. I would imagine that Ken Burns must have used it but felt that Doc wrote too favorable an account of his own life. Maybe he did ... I doubt anyone will really know for sure today. But what I can definitively say is that Doc was extremely well liked by everyone I ever met who worked for him. They all said DeForest Labs was the greatest place they ever worked.
I have a BSEE myself but my work was in computer hardware, software and systems engineering. - Ed Scott  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TaosFarmer (talk • contribs) 04:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  More info in PBS Documentary - lowers de Forest reputation 

message: I deleted the bit about his parents' being born in France, based on
http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=tdowling&id=I80858 (or http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=SHOW&db=tdowling&surname=DeForest%2C+Lee, click the pedigree link)
192.88.212.44 17:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parentage 

message: "Charles Herrold began broadcasting music and entertainment on a regular basis between 1912 and 1917 to fellow radio enthusiasts in the San Jose, California area, using the callsigns FN and SJN, but had to abandon broadcasting when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917."
You mention that you studied de Forest in a college class. Did you take an English class to earn that lofty degree? If so you would know that the previous posts would have been "too" (not "to") hard on de Forest. You might also have learned that to agree with something is to "jibe with" (not "jive with").
Other than those too...ooops...to...ooops two ignorant mistakes, your evaluation of the legacy of Lee de Forest is correct. He was a fake and should have landed in prison. 
Of course we all understand that someone as important as yourself "doesn't have time to do the research...." That is what makes Wikipedia great: a million under-educated morons with no time and no knowledge writing illiterate articles.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.101.107 (talk) 22:47, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  moved non sequitor from article 

message: We studied this once upon a time in a college class.  My memory of that study does not at all jive with this article, though I don't have the time to do the research.  Specifically, my recollection is that De Forest stumbled upon (invented or re-invented) an amp in the lab but could not explain mathematically how it worked on the stand.  He lost early court cases when others with a better theoretical understanding could explain the devices operation. Broke Back Records (talk) 21:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  To hard on De forest 

message: There is a lunar crater named de Forest (approx. 160 W, 78 S).  Is it named for Lee de Forest?  If so, it ought to be listed in the Legacy section. Rglovejoy (talk) 22:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lunar Crater 

message: The statement about the Audion/triode, "an improved version of John Fleming's recently invented diode vacuum tube detector." is not correct.  The triode is not an "improvement" in that it works better than a diode tube, in fact it does a different function.  The diode rectifies current (like a solid state diode) and the triode is the vacuum tube equivalent of a transister (or transient resistor).  
Tsbrownie (talk) 06:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, of course. The next paragraph talks about the foundational differences between the diode and the triode, so I've cut some of the redundancy out of the earlier paragraph. More to the point, I reworded the phrase "an improved version of..." Hopefully, this edit will help fix the problem. Binksternet (talk) 09:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diode vs. Triode tubes 

message: According to the book " 100 Great Scientists" published by Washington Square Press page 390 Forest was paid by the ATT a sum of three hundred and ninety thousand dollars for the audion tube.Subzbharti (talk) 10:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: ATT

message: The article implies that de Forest invented the word "radio."  This is entirely inaccurate.  FLAHAM (talk) 20:12, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Radio

message: as a descendant of lee it is spelled DeForest, no spaces or hyphens, as shown in the link below.
http://www.deforestcommunications.com/deforests/DeForest_Family_Tree.html  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.141.184.35 (talk) 03:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  As a descendant of lee, it is spelled DeForest 

message: This historical session at the Audio Engineering Society convention was very informative. Adams should be used as a source. Binksternet (talk) 17:50, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  AES presentation by Mike Adams, SJSU 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Re; section: Phonofilm sound-on-film process, fifth paragraph, next to last sentence. "Hollywood introduced a competing method for sound film, the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process developed by Warner 
Brothers, with the August 6, 1926 release of the John Barrymore film Don Juan."
Greetings,
Before I make any changes to this, I'd like some thoughts from other, more experienced ( and active ) editors.
Personally I feel that the term Hollywood is overused in general, in this instance it's nonsensical. Hollywood didn't introduce sound in any way that I know of, rather competing companies developed sound 
film systems independent of each other and the motion picture industry and then tried to sell the industry on them. As stated in this section de Forest demonstrated his system in New York and was rejected 
by the major film companies and was forced to show his films in independent theaters, all outside of Hollywood. 
I haven't been able to confirm this through related WP articles, but it seems I remember reading that both Don Juan and The Jazz Singer were filmed in the NYC area (Brooklyn, Astoria ??? ), and premiered 
in New York. Most if not all R&D work for sound film systems, from Edison to the systems mentioned in this article was done outside Hollywood. I realize that Hollywood is used broadly for the motion 
picture industry, but considering that the film industry as a whole avoided earlier sound film systems, and only converted to sound after Fox and WB proved that profits were to be made with sound, and for 
the other reasons I've given, to say Hollywood introduced sound in any is IMHO, at best misleading and inaccurate.  
 
Now as to this bit that WB developed Western Electric's sound on disc system, nice try, but totally and completely wrong. Related WP articles, multiple film histories and biographies,
etc. contradict this.
Any input would be welcome. Thanks, Jonel469 (talk) 13:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: De Forest was best known for his work in radio, and I suspect most editors (myself included) don't know very much about the development of sound movies. So I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to go ahead and add your changes to make that section more accurate.Thomas H. White (talk) 17:46, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  General Nitpicking 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article implies that the brand name "Ken-Rad" had something to do with the name Kenotron. It does not, Ken-Rad was a shortened version of Kentucky Radiation Lab, a vacuum-tube producing company. 2601:647:6480:B640:D9D9:AF15:3854:4697 (talk) 17:05, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ken-Rad