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
Triode These were the first vacuum tube triodes. The name "triode" appeared later, when it became necessary to distinguish it from other kinds of vacuum tubes with more or fewer elements (e.g. diodes, tetrodes, pentodes, etc.). There were lengthy lawsuits between De Forest and von Lieben, and De Forest and the Marconi Company, who represented John Ambrose Fleming, the inventor of the diode. The discovery of the triode's amplifying ability in 1912 revolutionized electrical technology, creating the new field of "electronics", the technology of active (amplifying) electrical devices. The triode was immediately applied to many areas of communication. Triode "continuous wave"