Electronics

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Hi Guys

Would you say that the electronic era started with the development of the electromagnet or the thermionic valve?

Cheers

You ask a hard question.



A lot of discoveries are logged in as a comment in a lab manual by the founder and later “discovered” by some one who can find a use for it so the question may be who first found a use for the idea or who discovered it? Faraday invented a motor and generator around 1850. Edison made a light bulb which would turn black after a after a few hours. He tried putting a plate in it to draw the carbon away from the glass (actually he was building on an earlier source). It did draw a current and he documented the Edison effect but had no practical use for it since the lamp still turned black. In 1896 Tesla built a poly phase generator system at Niagra. The generator was used to produce power for transmitters used with coherers for the early radio telegraphy. Marconi's radio system was in use for 10 years and DeForest building of Edison's discovery (based on earlier works) invented the triode tube which could be used to amplify thus advancing the usability of the radio system.


A lot of people equate electronics with radio. The radio and television industry was the driving force behind the new developments but we had radio 10 years before the DeForest triode so I am back where we started. Without a signal to amplify the triode would have been a useless.


Gee I didn't put Bell and his telephone in the mix. Without the telephone receiver we wouldn't have a way to hear the signal DeForest is amplifying?


Hummm? Without a battery none of these thing would have been discovered so I guess it goes back to the guy who put two dissimilar metals on a frog's leg and made it jump! Which in turn lead to the Voltaic pile.