I Accidentally Invented Electronics in 1906 Our modern media spring from a common source , an invention that is rarely mentioned today but that had as decisive a role in shaping society as the internal combustion engine or the incandescent lightbulb . The invention was called the Audion . It was the first electronic audio amplifier , and the man who created it was Lee de Forest . Even when judged by the high standards set by America ' s mad - genius inventors , de Forest was an oddball . Nasty , ill - favored , and generally despised - in high school he was voted " homeliest boy " in his class - he was propelled by an enormous ego and an equally outsized inferiority complex . When he wasn ' t marrying or divorcing a wife , alienating a colleague , or leading a business to ruin , he was usually in court defending himself against charges of fraud or patent infringement - or pressing his own suit against one of his many enemies . De Forest grew up in Alabama , the son of a schoolmaster . After earning a doctorate in engineering from Yale in 1896 , he spent a decade fiddling with the latest radio and telegraph technology , desperately seeking the breakthrough that would make his name and fortune . In 1906 , his moment arrived . Without quite knowing what he was doing , he took a standard two - pole vacuum tube , which sent an electric current from one wire ( the filament ) to a second ( the plate ) , and he added a third wire to it , turning the diode into a triode . He found that when he sent a small electric charge into the third wire - the grid - it boosted the strength of the current running between the filament and the plate . The device , he explained in a patent application , could be adapted " for amplifying feeble electric currents . " De Forest ' s seemingly modest invention turned out to be a world changer . Because it could be used to amplify an electrical signal , it could also be used to amplify audio transmissions sent and received as radio waves . Up to then , radios had been of limited use because their signals faded so quickly . With the Audion to boost the signals , long - distance wireless transmissions became possible , setting the stage for radio broadcasting . The Audion became , as well , a critical component of the new telephone system , enabling people on opposite sides of the country , or the world , to hear each other talk . De Forest couldn ' t have known it at the time , but he had inaugurated the age of electronics . Electric currents are , simply put , streams of electrons , and the Audion was the first device that allowed the intensity of those streams to be controlled with precision . As the twentieth century progressed , triode tubes came to form the technological heart of the modern communications , entertainment , and media industries . They could be found in radio transmitters and receivers , in hi - fi sets , in public address systems , in guitar amps . Arrays of tubes also served as the processing units and data storage systems in many early digital computers . The first mainframes often had tens of thousands of them . When , around 1950 , vacuum tubes began to be replaced by smaller , cheaper , and more reliable solid - state transistors , the popularity of electronic appliances exploded . In the miniaturized form of the triode transistor , Lee de Forest ' s invention became the workhorse of our information age . In the end , de Forest wasn ' t quite sure whether to be pleased or dismayed by the world he had helped bring into being . In " Dawn of the Electronic Age , " a 1952 article he wrote for Popular Mechanics , he crowed about his creation of the Audion , referring to it as " this small acorn from which has sprung the gigantic oak that is today world - embracing . " At the same time , he lamented the " moral depravity " of commercial broadcast media . " A melancholy view of our national mental level is obtained from a survey of the moronic quality of the majority of today ' s radio programs , " he wrote . Looking ahead to future applications of electronics , he grew even gloomier . He believed that " electron physiologists " would eventually be able to monitor and analyze " thought or brain waves , " allowing " joy and grief [ to ] be measured in definite , quantitative units . " Ultimately , he concluded , " a professor may be able to implant knowledge into the reluctant brains of his 22 nd - century pupils . What terrifying political possibilities may be lurking there ! Let us be thankful that such things are only for posterity , not for us . " From The Shallows : What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains , copyright © 2010 Nicholas Carr ; to be published by W . W . Norton and Company in June . The author of this post can be contacted at tips @ gizmodo . com 출처 : http : / / gizmodo . com / 5550365 / i - accidentally - invented - electronics - in - 1906