Triode Triode A triode is an electronic amplifying vacuum tube (or "thermionic valve" in British English) consisting of three electrodes inside an evacuated glass envelope: a heated filament or cathode, a grid, and a plate (anode). Developed from Lee De Forest's 1906 Audion, a partial vacuum tube that added a grid electrode to the thermionic diode (Fleming valve), the triode was the first practical electronic amplifier and the ancestor of other types of vacuum tubes such as the tetrode and pentode. Its invention founded the electronics age, making possible amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony. Triodes were widely used in consumer
Don Carpenter (electrical engineer) Don Carpenter (electrical engineer) Donald L. Carpenter is a Space Scientist, Professor (Research) Emeritus in the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford University. He co-discovered the sharp dropoff in the plasmasphere surrounding Earth. Known as co-discoverer of the “knee,” or sharp dropoff (later called the plasmapause) in the radial profile of the dense plasma cloud (later called the plasmasphere) that surrounds the Earth to typical equatorial distances of several Earth radii. Carpenter was awarded the 2002 John Howard Dellinger Medal by the International Union of Radio Science for "his discovery of the plasmapause, for pioneering studies of the plasmasphere structure and