John Ambrose Fleming

Sir John Ambrose Fleming FRS (29 November 1849 – 18 April 1945) was an English electrical engineer and physicist. He is known for inventing the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, the diode, then called the kenotron in 1904.^[2] He is also famous for the left hand rule (for electric motors).^[3] He was born the eldest of seven children of James Fleming DD (died 1879), a Congregational minister, and his wife, Mary Ann, at Lancaster, Lancashire and baptised on 11 February 1850.^[4]

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John Ambrose Fleming
• Page 40 - Reid, T. R., 2001, The Chip: Random House, New York, 309p.