Methods, Apparatus, and Operation
In De Forest method. a battery connected between this electrode, as cathode, and another as anode resulted in a convection current of electrons from one to the other. Since negative electricity only was present, current could flow in but one direction. This is so far the action of the Fleming valve which also makes use of the Edison effect, but in the audion an epoch making advance was made in that the third electrode allows us to completely control the strength of the electron current without consuming appreciable energy at that electrode or in its circuit. In other words an inappreciable amount of power applied to the third electrode, or grid, will result in large changes in power in the anode circuit. Moreover, since the electrons have no appreciable inertia, the response in the anode circuit to stimuli in the grid circuit is practically instantaneous.
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“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)