John Ambrose Fleming

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Fleming
Sir John Ambrose Fleming. b. November 29, 1849, Lancaster, England ... John Ambrose Fleming, was born on 29th November 1849, the eldest son of seven ...
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John Ambrose Fleming: Biography from Answers.com
Sir John Ambrose Fleming British physicist and electrical engineer (1849-1945) Fleming, who was born at Lancaster, studied for a short time at
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Professor Sir John Ambrose Fleming :: Radio-Electronics.Com
The life of Professor Sir John Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the oscillation diode valve or vacuum tube. Some say he is the founder of electronics.
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Professor Sir John Ambrose Fleming is one of the great men of radio and electronics. ... John Ambrose Fleming was born on 29th November 1849, the eldest of seven ...
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John Ambrose Fleming - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
John Ambrose Fleming. From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science ... John Ambrose Fleming is best known for his discoveries related to electricity ...
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{{Infobox_Scientist|name = Sir J. Ambrose Fleming |image = Replace this image male.svg |image_width = 225px |caption = |birth_name = John Ambrose Fleming |birth_date = {{birth date|1849|11|29|mf=y--> |birth_place = [Lancaster, England, [Lancashire, [England |death_date = {{death date and age|1945|4|18|1849|11|29|mf=y--> |death_place = [Sidmouth, [Devon, [England |residence = {{flag|England--> |nationality = {{flagicon|England--> [England |field = [Electrical engineer and [physicist |work_institutions = [University College, London
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[Fleming's right hand rule
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Sir John Ambrose Fleming (November 29, 1849 - April 18, 1945) was an England electrical engineer and physicist. He was born on November 29 1849, the eldest of seven children of James Fleming DD (d. 1879), a Congregational polity minister, and his wife, Mary Ann, at Lancaster, England, Lancashire and baptised on February 11 1850. He was a devout Christian and preached on one occasion at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London on the topic of evidence for the resurrection. In 1932, along with Douglas Dewar and Bernard Acworth, he helped establish the Evolution Protest Movement. Having no children, he bequeathed much of his estate to Christian charities, especially those that helped the poor. He was an accomplished photographer and, in addition, he painted watercolours and enjoyed climbing in the Alps.

Early years Ambrose Fleming was born in Lancaster, England and educated at University College School, London, and University College London. He became a Lecturer at several universities including the University of Cambridge, the University of Nottingham, and University College London, where he was the first professor of Electrical Engineering. He was also consultant to the Marconi Company Wireless Telegraph Company, Swan Company, Ferranti, Edison Telephone, and later the Edison Electric Light Company. In 1892, Fleming presented an important paper on electrical transformer theory to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London.

Education and marriages Fleming started school at about the age of ten, attending a private school where he particularly enjoyed geometry. Prior to that his mother tutored him and he had learned, virtually by heart, a book called the Child's Guide to Knowledge, a popular book of the day - even as an adult he would quote from it. His schooling continued at the University College School where, although accomplished at maths, he habitually came bottom of the class at Latin.

Even as a boy he wanted to become an engineer. At 11 he had his own workshop where he built model boats and engines. He even built his own camera, the start of a lifelong interest in photography. Training to become an engineer was beyond the family's financial resources, but he reached his goal via a path that alternated education with work.

He enrolled for a BSc degree at University College, London, graduated in 1870, and studied under the mathematician Augustus de Morgan and the physicist G. Carey Foster. He became a student of chemistry at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington in London (now Imperial College). There he first studied the voltaic battery, which became the subject of his first scientific paper. This was the first paper to be read to the new Physical Society of London (now the Institute of Physics) and appears on page one of volume one of their Proceedings. Financial problems again forced him to work for his living and in the summer of 1874 he became science master at Cheltenham College, a public school, earning £400 per year. His own scientific research continued and he corresponded with James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge University. After saving £400, and securing a grant of £50 a year, in October 1877 at the age of 27, he once again enrolled as a student, this time at Cambridge. Maxwell's lectures, he admitted, were difficult to follow. Maxwell, he said, often appeared obscure and had 'a paradoxical and allusive way of speaking'. On occasions Fleming was the only student at those lectures. Fleming again graduated, this time with a First Class Honours degree in chemistry and physics. He then obtained a DSc from London and served one year at Cambridge University as a demonstrator of mechanical engineering before being appointed as the first Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Nottingham. But after less than a year he left.

On 11 June 1887 he married Clara Ripley (1856/7–1917), daughter of Walter Freake Pratt, a solicitor from Bath, England. On 27 July 1928 he married the popular young singer Olive May Franks (b. 1898/9), of Bristol, daughter of George Franks, a Cardiff businessman.

Activities and achievements In November 1904, he invented and patented the two-electrode vacuum-tube rectifier, which he called the oscillation valve. It was also called a thermionic valve, vacuum diode, kenotron, thermionic tube, or Fleming valve. The Supreme Court later invalidated the patent because of an improper disclaimer and, additionally, maintained the technology in the patent was known art when filed. Misreading the Supreme Court: A Puzzling Chapter in the History of Radio. Mercurians.org. This invention is often considered to have been the beginning of electronics, for this was the first vacuum tube. Fleming's diode was used in radio receivers and radars for many decades afterwards, until solid-state electronic technology took over more than 50 years later.

In 1906, Lee De Forest of the United States added a control "grid" to the valve to create a vacuum tube RF detector called the Audion, leading Fleming to accuse him of copying his ideas. De Forest's device was shortly refined by him and Edwin H. Armstrong into an amplifier tube called the triode. The triode was vital in the creation of long-distance telephone and radio communications, radars, and early electronic digital computers (mechanical and electro-mechanical digital computers already existed using different technology). Fleming also contributed in the fields of photometry (optics), electronics, wireless telegraphy (radio), and electrical measurements. He was British honours system in 1929, and he died at his home in Sidmouth, Devon in 1945. His contributions to electronic communications and radar were of vital importance in winning World War II. Fleming was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1933 for "the conspicuous part he played in introducing physical and engineering principles into the radio art."

Note from Eulogy at Centenary celebration of the invention of the thermionic valve:

One century ago, in November 1904, John Ambrose Fleming FRS, Pender Professor at UCL, filed patent No. 24,850 in Great Britain, for a device called the Thermionic Valve. When inserted together with a galvanometer, into a tuned electrical circuit, it could be used as a very sensitive rectifying detector of high frequency wireless currents, known as radio waves. It was a major step forward in the ‘wireless revolution’.

In November 1905, he patented the ‘Fleming Valve’ (No. 803684) in the USA. As a rectifying diode, and forerunner to the triode valve and many related structures, it can also be considered to be the device that gave birth to modern electronics.

In the ensuing years such valves, were largely superseded by ‘cat’s whiskers’, and decades later most electron tubes, as they became generically known, were gradually replaced by semiconductor diodes and transistors, which were significantly smaller, cheaper, and more reliable. In time and in turn, even these have been largely replaced by integrated circuits, better known as silicon chips.

Today, descendants of the original vacuum tube still play an important role in a range of applications. They can be found in the power stages of radio and television transmitters, in audio amplifiers, as detectors of optical and short wavelength radiation, and in sensitive equipment that must be “radiation-hard”.

Books by Fleming

Electric Lamps and Electric Lighting, 1899.
Waves and Ripples in Water, Air, and Aether, 1902.
The Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy, 1906.
The Thermionic Valve and its Development in Radio Telegraphy and Telephony, 1919.

References

James E. Brittain, "John A. Fleming", Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 95, No. 1, 2007, pp. 313-315.

External articles Patents

Fleming Valve patent

Websites

IEEE History Center biography
Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, UCL - home of the original Fleming valve

{{Persondata] and physicist, [Lancashire, England, [Devon, England-->

John Ambrose Fleming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir John Ambrose Fleming (November 29, 1849 - April 18, 1945) was an English electrical engineer and physicist. He is known for inventing the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube ...

Sir John Ambrose Fleming.
John Ambrose Fleming was in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, on 29 November 1849. His father was Rev. James Fleming a Congregational minister, his mother, Mary Ann.

Sir John Ambrose Fleming — Department of Electronic ...
Sir John Ambrose Fleming ... Sir John Ambrose Fleming was the first head of England's first University Department of Electrical Technology (a few years later to be called ...

John Ambrose Fleming - the founder of electronics? :: Radio ...
The life of Professor Sir John Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the oscillation diode valve or vacuum tube. Some say he is the founder of electronics.

John Ambrose Fleming
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Fleming
Sir John Ambrose Fleming b. November 29, 1849, Lancaster, England d. April 18, 1945, Sidmouth, Devon, England

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Fleming Centenary Conference
The Fleming Valve Centenary Fleming Centenary Conference 1st-2nd July 2004 University College London UK In 1904 Prof John Ambrose Fleming discovered that the Edison effect seen in ...