1873 Aug. 26 Born, Council Bluffs, Iowa
1896 Ph.B., Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
1899 Ph.D., Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
1900 Joined Western Electric Co. , Chicago, Ill.
1900 Designed alternating current transmitter
1900 Developed electrolytic receiver
1901 Founded American de Forest Wireless Telegraph Co. (later United Wireless Telegraph Co. )
1905 Developed first model of audion amplifier
1906 Developed triode vacuum tube
1906 Married Lucille Sheardown (divorced 1907)
1908 Married Nora Blatch (divorced 1911)
1910 Broadcast voice of Enrico Caruso by radio from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, N.Y.
1912 Sold telephone repeater rights to American Telephone and Telegraph Co. , which used his three electrode vacuum tube in first transcontinental telephony
1912 Married Mary Mayo (divorced 1930)
1913 Demonstrated first oscillating audion tube
1913 Became vice president, Radio Telegraph Co.
1913 Became vice president, de Forest Radio Co.
1916 Made first radio news broadcast
1916 Established radio broadcast station
1919 Patented phonofilm device for making talking pictures
ca. 1920 Published How to Set Up an Amateur Radio Receiving Station (New York, N.Y.: de Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Co. 32 pp.)
ca. 1922 Published Wireless in the Home (New York, N.Y.: de Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Co. 32 pp.)
1923 Demonstrated sound on film at Rivoli Theater , New York, N.Y.
1923 Organized de Forest Phonofilm Co.
1926 D.Sc., Yale University , New Haven, Conn.
1930 Married Marie Mosquini
1934 Established Lee de Forest, Inc., Los Angeles, Calif.
1942 Published Television, Today and Tomorrow (New York, N.Y.: Dial Press. 361 pp.)
1947 Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
1950 Published Father of Radio (Chicago, Ill.: Wilcox and Fallett. 502 pp.)
1951 Vice president, National Association for Better Radio and Television
1961 June 30 Died, Hollywood, Calif.

...from Lee de Forest Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.