History of electronic engineering on to develop the first practical and widely used radio wave based communication system. In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming, the first professor of electrical Engineering at University College London, invented the first radio tube, the diode. Then, in 1906, Robert von Lieben and Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the triode. Electronics is often considered to have begun with the invention of the triode. Within 10 years, the device was used in radio transmitters and receivers as well as systems for long distance telephone calls. The invention of the triode amplifier, generator, and detector made audio communication
Valve transmitters equation for the tetrode can be reduced back to that of the triode as long as the screen grid is kept at the same potential. "In short the anode current is controlled by the electrical potential (voltage) of the first grid." A DC bias is applied to the valve to ensure that the part of the transfer equation which is most suitable to the required application is used. The input signal is able to perturb (change) the potential of the grid, this in turn will change the anode current. Another term for the anode in a valve is the plate