Audio power amplifier inside the chassis of the main product. The audio amplifier was invented around 1912 by Lee De Forest, made possible by his invention of the first practical amplifying electrical component, the triode vacuum tube (or "valve" in British English) in 1907. The triode was a three terminal device with a control grid that can modulate the flow of electrons from the filament to the plate. The triode vacuum amplifier was used to make the first AM radio. Early audio power amplifiers were based on vacuum tubes and some of these achieved notably high audio quality (e.g., the Williamson amplifier of
David Davies (electrical engineer) David Davies (electrical engineer) Sir David Evan Naunton Davies , known as Den Davies or David "DEN" Davies, (born 1935) is a British electrical engineer and educator. He was knighted for services to science in 1994. 1985-1988: Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London (UCL), and holder of the Pender Chair, having already been lecturing there, in "Communications Systems", for many years prior to that. 1986-1988: Vice-Provost of University College London 1988-1993: Vice Chancellor of Loughborough University 1993–1999: Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence 1994-1995: President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers