Word: deforest
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Dates: during 1992-1992
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...Burns makes his subject come alive by focusing on three crucial people. First is Lee DeForest, who patented the key invention that spawned the radio age -- the three-element vacuum tube -- but emerges as something of a self- promoter and con man. Edwin Howard Armstrong, who made important refinements in De Forest's invention and battled him endlessly in the patent courts, is the film's tragic hero: a bullheaded visionary defeated by people smarter and more ruthless than he. David Sarnoff, the founder of NBC, is one of those ruthless people ("I don't get ulcers; I give them...