Portal:Biography/Selected biography

John Ambrose Fleming is best known for his discoveries related to electricity and telecommunication. He graduated from a university in London. This is where he started researching the idea of the "Edison Effect." The "Edison Effect" is an electric current flow between a heated cathode in a seperate tube. The "Edison Effect" helped Fleming realize how to fix weak radio signals. After college, he started to work at the Marconi Company. This is where he invented and patented his electronic amplifier.

Fleming invented an important electronic device called the oscillation valve which some believed marked the beginning of electronics. Another inventor later took the oscillation valve idea and ended up creating what we now call an amplifier. But this isn't a stereo amplifier that makes music sound loud, it is a type of amplifier that generates strength to radio waves. The oscillation valve was the first transmitter to reach across the Atlantic. It was John Ambrose's idea to help the world communicate across the ocean. The oscillation valve looked like a lightbulb with a black coil attached to it. The coil was then attached to a metal cylinder in the center of the bulb. What this contraption did was conduct electricity to a plate of metal which could receive radio wave lengths.

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