Problem: Jess Claiborne Neely (January 4, 1898 - April 9, 1983) was an American football player and a baseball and football coach. He was head football coach at Southwestern University (now Rhodes College) from 1924 to 1927, at Clemson University from 1931 to 1939 and at Rice University from 1940 to 1966, compiling a career college football record of 207-176-19. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1971. Neely was also the head baseball coach at the University of Alabama (1929-1930), at Clemson (1932-1938) and at Rice (1945 and 1948), tallying a career college baseball mark of 109-108-5.

Neely played football at Vanderbilt University from 1920 to 1922 under head coach Dan McGugin. He was captain and halfback of the undefeated 1922 team, and its best passer. Neely belonged to the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Although the Commodores expected a "hard game against the university rivals", Vanderbilt shut out Tennessee 20-0. All three Commodore touchdowns came from passes by Neely to Gink Hendrick. Neely's long first-quarter pass hit Hendrick, who ran 25 yards for the touchdown. In the second quarter Hendrick ran to the 4-yard line on a pass from Neely, and the first half ended with Vanderbilt in possession at the Tennessee one-foot line. Hendrick caught another 30-yard touchdown pass from Neely in the fourth quarter. Two weeks later the Commodores lost 56-6 to one of Auburn's greatest teams, Vanderbilt's worst defeat since its 83-0 loss to Georgia Tech in 1917. The Commodores had only one first down, and never moved the ball beyond their 40-yard line. Neely was one of Vanderbilt's few stars, blocking well and passing Vanderbilt's only touchdown to Hendrick in the end zone. In a "thriller from the start," the Alabama Crimson Tide defeated Vanderbilt for the first time on November 6, 1920 by a score of 14-7. A forward pass from Doc Kuhn to Neely gave the Commodores their sole touchdown. The following week, "expecting one of the greatest football games of the year", Vanderbilt had a difficult practice schedule before its game with the Virginia Cavaliers; Virginia and Vanderbilt tied, 7-7. Early in the game, Vanderbilt mounted a swift offense, with Neely throwing Hendrick a touchdown pass. That season, Vanderbilt opponents gained less on punt returns than they did against any other team in the South because of coverage by Percy Conyers and Neely.

What happened after the Commodores lost?

Answer with quotes: The Commodores had only one first down, and never moved the ball beyond their 40-yard line.

Problem: Lee de Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the son of Anna Margaret (nee Robbins) and Henry Swift DeForest. He was a direct descendant of Jesse de Forest, the leader of a group of Walloon Huguenots who fled Europe in the 17th Century due to religious persecution. De Forest's father was a Congregational Church minister who hoped his son would also become a pastor. In 1879 the elder de Forest became president of the American Missionary Association's Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, a school "open to all of either sex, without regard to sect, race, or color", and which educated primarily African-Americans.

One of de Forest's areas of research at Federal Telegraph was improving the reception of signals, and he came up with the idea of strengthening the audio frequency output from a grid Audion by feeding it into a second tube for additional amplification. He called this a "cascade amplifier", which eventually consisted of chaining together up to three Audions. At this time the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was researching ways to amplify telephone signals to provide better long-distance service, and it was recognized that de Forest's device had potential as a telephone line repeater. In mid-1912 an associate, John Stone Stone, contacted AT&T to arrange for de Forest to demonstrate his invention. It was found that de Forest's "gassy" version of the Audion could not handle even the relatively low voltages used by telephone lines. (Due to the way he constructed the tubes, de Forest's Audions would cease to operate with too high a vacuum.) However, careful research by Dr. Harold D. Arnold and his team at AT&T's Western Electric subsidiary determined that by improving the tube's design, it could be more fully evacuated, and the high vacuum allowed it to successfully operate at telephone line voltages. With these changes the Audion evolved into a modern electron-discharge vacuum tube, using electron flows rather than ions. (Dr. Irving Langmuir at the General Electric Corporation made similar findings, and both he and Arnold attempted to patent the "high vacuum" construction, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1931 that this modification could not be patented). After a delay of ten months, in July 1913 AT&T, through a third party who disguised his link to the telephone company, purchased the wire rights to seven Audion patents for $50,000. De Forest had hoped for a higher payment, but was again in bad financial shape and was unable to bargain for more. In 1915, AT&T used the innovation to conduct the first transcontinental telephone calls, in conjunction with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco.

Did he work alone in his research?

Answer with quotes:
an associate, John Stone Stone,