Electrical engineering a crucial enabling technology for electronic television. John Fleming invented the first radio tube, the diode, in 1904. Two years later, Robert von Lieben and Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the triode. In 1920, Albert Hull developed the magnetron which would eventually lead to the development of the microwave oven in 1946 by Percy Spencer. In 1934, the British military began to make strides toward radar (which also uses the magnetron) under the direction of Dr Wimperis, culminating in the operation of the first radar station at Bawdsey in August 1936. In 1941, Konrad Zuse presented
Triode audio systems until it was replaced in the 1960s by the transistor, invented in 1947, which brought the "vacuum tube era" introduced by the triode to a close. Today triodes are mostly used in high-power applications for which solid state semiconductor devices are unsuitable, such as radio transmitters and industrial heating equipment. However, more recently the triode and other vacuum tube devices have been experiencing a resurgence and comeback in high fidelity audio and musical equipment. They also remain in use as vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), which come in a variety of implementations but all are essentially triode devices. All