100th Anniversary of Electronics

Researchers are marking November 16, 2004 as the 100th birthday of electronics, which began with British scientist John Ambrose Fleming's 1904 invention of the first practical electronic device. Known as the thermionic diode, this first simple vacuum tube, containing only two electrodes, could be used to convert an alternating current (ac) to a direct current (dc).

A special AVS meeting session, taking place exactly 100 years after the day that Fleming applied for a British patent on the diode, will celebrate this seminal invention and the subsequent evolution of electronic components based on vacuum devices. (Contact Fred Dylla, Jefferson Lab in Virginia, dylla@jlab.gov, and Paul Redhead of the National Research Council in Canada, redhead@magma.ca; more information on this and other AVS meeting stories at http://www2.avs.org/symposium/anaheim/pressroom/news.pdf).