Fleming valve valve proved to be the start of a technological revolution. After reading Fleming's 1905 paper on his oscillation valve, American engineer Lee DeForest in 1906 created a three-element vacuum tube, the Audion, by adding a wire grid between cathode and anode. It was the first electronic amplifying device, allowing the creation of amplifiers and continuous wave oscillators. De Forest quickly refined his device into the triode, which became the basis of long-distance telephone and radio communications, radars, and early digital computers for 50 years, until the advent of the transistor in the 1960s. Fleming sued De Forest for infringing his
William McLellan (American electrical engineer) William McLellan (American electrical engineer) William Howard McLellan (December 1, 1924 – September 30, 2011) was an American electrical engineer, who achieved some fame in 1960 by succeeding at an engineering challenge set by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. McLellan was born in Casper, Wyoming, grew up in Orland, California, and fought in the Canadian Army in the Second World War. He met his wife Patricia Price in England during the war, and afterwards the couple settled in Pasadena, California, where McLellan attended California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In December 1959, Feynmann offered two challenges relating to nanotechnology at the