Lee De ForestLee De Forest was born August 26, 1873 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. De Forest was the son of a Congregationalist minister. His father moved the family to Alabama and assumed the presidency of the nearly bankrupt Talladega College for Negroes there. Excluded by citizens of the white community who did not appreciate his father's efforts to educate blacks, Lee, his brother and sister made friends among the town's black children and spent a happy childhood although severely disciplined in this rural community. (Kraeuter, 74 years old). As a child, he was fascinated by machines and was often enthusiastic about the many technological advances of the late 19th century. He started 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 miniature blast furnace and locomotive and a working silvering 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 science school, and in 1893 enrolled at the Sheffield Scientific School in Yale University, one of the few institutions in the United States to offer first-rate scientific education. (Kraeuter, 74 years old). De Forest later received the Ph.D. in physics in 1899, thanks to scholarships and money his parents earned doing odd jobs. At that time he became interested in electricity...