Lee De ForestLee De Forest was born on August 26, 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. De Forest was the son of a Congregational minister. His father moved the family to Alabama and there assumed the presidency of the nearly bankrupt Talladega College for Negroes. Shunned by citizens of the white community who resented their father's efforts to educate blacks, Lee, his brother, and his sister made friends among the town's black children and spent a happy if severely disciplined childhood in this rural community. (Kraeuter, 74). As a child he was fascinated by machinery and was often excited when he heard about the many technological advances that occurred in the late 19th century. He began tinkering and inventing things as early as high school, often trying to build things he could sell for money. By the age of 13 he was an enthusiastic inventor of mechanical gadgets such as a blast furnace and a miniature locomotive and a working silver plating apparatus. (A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries). His father had planned for him to follow him into a career in the clergy, but Lee wanted to go to school for science and, in 1893, he enrolled in Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School, one of the few institutions in the United States that then offered a first-class science education. (Kraeuter, 74). De Forest went on to earn his Ph.D. in physics in 1899, with the help of scholarships and money his parents earned by doing odd jobs. By this time he had become interested in electricity...