On 03/27/2016 10:00 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article , philo wrote:
I'm reading the auto biography of Lee deForest written in 1950 and he
often talks about how things were back in the "old days".

He mentioned a Wig Wag transmitter but did not describe it.

It's another name for a "bug" key or a Vibroplex.



OK...he did not explain.

BTW: Though most of my ham gear is gone, I still have my Vibroplex!

Interesting side note:

Though he invented the triode and recognized at once it's value, there
was no where in the book where he gave a cogent explanation of how it
actually worked.

I think he had some basic idea of how amplification worked (with the
grid attracting or repelling electrons passing by), but he clearly had
absolutely no understanding of how the tube worked as an oscillator or
how regeneration worked. And he certainly never got to the point of
working out a transfer function as a characteristic curve.
--scott



Yep. He used a lot of words but he seemed to be stumbling around. That
said, he was smart enough to realize what the triode could be used for.



The book is well worth reading.