Invited Paper HI-MoM1
Marconi and the First "Vacuum Tube": More than 100 years of Nothing at Work

Monday, November 9, 2009, 8:20 am, Room B2

The history of the discovery of the uses of nothing, i.e., vacuum, pleases the mind. In communications, Guglielmo Marconi utilized a vacuum device about 1898. The "coherer" detected radio frequency energy rendering it sensible to people through other devices. Marconi evacuated this device to improve its performance. In doing so, he illustrated a deeper principle: eliminate the equivalent of "friction" and see (and enjoy and exploit) the true operation of nature. Newton’s celestial mechanics also illustrate this principle, which has an analogy in economics as well.

Other communications pioneers also used vacuum devices to detect the signals of the then new wireless telegraphy. Notably, Marconi, through the work of John Ambrose Fleming, implemented the vacuum diode, the "Fleming Valve," thereby advancing the art. Lee deForest put the famous "grid" between the filament cathode and anode of the Fleming vacuum diode, and created the primary technology of 20^th century communications, the triode vacuum tube as an amplifier and oscillator.

When Fleming heard about that innovation, he is reported to have said: "I wish I’d thought of that!" Marconi, being the businessman he was, implemented these new vacuum devices as quickly as he could, as did all the other wireless pioneers. ##