Lee De Forest Essay -- essays research papers

Lee De ForestLee De Forest was born(p) Aug. 26, 1873, Council Bluffs, Iowa. De Forest was the son of a Congregational minister. His father moved the family to atomic number 13 and there assumed the presidency of the nearly bankrupt Talladega College for Negroes. Excluded by citizens of the white-hot community who resented his fathers efforts to educate lightlessnesss, Lee and his brother and sister made friends from among the black children of the town and spent a happy although sternly disciplined childishness in this rural community. (Kraeuter, 74). As a child he was transfixed with machinery and was often excited when hearing of the many technological advances during the late nineteenth century. He began tinkering and inventing things even in high school, often trying to ramp up things that he could sell for money. By the age of 13 he was an gung ho inventor of mechanical gadgets such as a miniature gust furnace and locomotive, and a working silverplating apparatus. (A S cience Odyssey People and Discoveries).His father had planned for him to discover him in a career in the clergy, but Lee cute to go to school for science and, in 1893, enrolled at the Sheffield Scientific naturalise of Yale University, one of the few institutions in the United States then offering a first-class scientific education. (Kraeuter, 74). De Forest went on to earn the Ph.D. in physical science in 1899, with the help of scholarships, and money his parents made by working peerless jobs. By this time he had become interested in electricit...