By what madness it must have seemed...

[goraman]

I was looking at the differences in vacuum tubes of different kinds,and it suddenly occurred to me that some freakishly brilliant unlucky bastard figured out there where these things he couldn't see called Electrons and decided he would alter there flow to create amplification.
Could you just see explaining your theory of invisible electrical things that come in two different flavors + and - and explaining how they flow through objects like metal or could be stored and used to create artificial light.

Humm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron

Even explaining it to people today sounds nutz!:mental:
It's a wonder the discovery didn't get him a life time of torcher in an insane asylum or worse.
Ever just look at an electronic device and marvel that for all the design and engineering labor and assembly the thing actually works!

I believe this is general hifi discussion but if it isn't moderator do your thing!

[lurcher]

It sounds worst because you bunch it all together. The discovery of the electron by Thompson wasn't a bolt out of the blue, the existence of +ve and -ve charge was known 150 years before then, and as the wiki page says, the electron was named a few years before it was actually discovered. The power of physics (and all the sciences) is the method leads to a process, an observation leads to a hypothesis, that leads to experiment, that leads to conformation or not of the hypothesis that leads to more understanding and more questions, that repeats the process.

Once the electron was discovered, the triode was bound to happen, if De Forest hadn't done it someone else would have soon after (not to dismiss his work). The idea of the flow of current through conductors was well known before the cause of that flow was discovered, in fact they got it wrong, the direction of conventional current flow is the wrong way, they had to guess, and got it wrong, it was only the discovery of the electron that showed that they had lost that 50:50 bet.

[goraman]

It sounds worst because you bunch it all together. The discovery of the electron by Thompson wasn't a bolt out of the blue, the existence of +ve and -ve charge was known 150 years before then, and as the wiki page says, the electron was named a few years before it was actually discovered. The power of physics (and all the sciences) is the method leads to a process, an observation leads to a hypothesis, that leads to experiment, that leads to conformation or not of the hypothesis that leads to more understanding and more questions, that repeats the process.

Once the electron was discovered, the triode was bound to happen, if De Forest hadn't done it someone else would have soon after (not to dismiss his work). The idea of the flow of current through conductors was well known before the cause of that flow was discovered, in fact they got it wrong, the direction of conventional current flow is the wrong way, they had to guess, and got it wrong, it was only the discovery of the electron that showed that they had lost that 50:50 bet.

You are right, but it dose still all seem pretty much like mad science to me.
And when I think about it all working perfectly at the press of a couple of buttons it really dose amaze me or maybe I'm just easily impressed.