"Dave xxxxx" wrote in message
.uk...
tony sayer wrote:
On 16th November 1904, John Ambrose Fleming applied for a patent for
his new invention: the thermionic diode valve.

Sir John Ambrose Fleming (sometimes also listed as Ambrose J. Fleming,
November 29, 1848 - April 18, 1945) was a British electrical engineer and
physicist.

In 1906 Lee De Forest of the USA added a control grid to the valve to
create
a vacuum tube RF detector called the Audion, leading Fleming to accuse him
of plagiarism. De Forest's device was later refined into an amplifier.


.... and the recommended and highly respected "Electricity and Magnetism"
text book when I went to university in 1959 clearly stated that transistors
would never work for anything other than audio.
--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm