| The written word is a private medium, and bookish people keep to themselves. The student with a paperback cradled on her crossed ankles as she sits in the park and ignores the frisbees whirring by, or the retired professor who spends all day in the twilight of a microfilm reader-they know that study requires solitude. To learn, you must be alone. |
| I owe much to Michael Kammen. He suggested the De Forest family as a dissertation topic, supervised the initial research and writing, and later encouraged me as I resurrected John and Lee de Forest in separate books. He taught history as if it mattered, but not as if it were all that mattered. After Thanksgiving dinner, he offered me a cigar. |
| Many other friends and colleagues read this book in various stages of its seemingly interminable development. For generous criticisms I thank Glenn Altschuler, Shaleen Barnes, Michael Colacurcio, Clark Larsen, Berry Mitchell, Larry Moore, and John Werly. Bob Bento of the Physics Department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth tutored me in elementary electronics, and I also received valuable instruction from Bill Hwang and Barney Dennison. Bill Johnson translated Latin for me, while Kevin O'Brien escorted me through the dark labyrinths of the law library and patent law. Tom Lewis, who was finishing his masterly history of early radio, Empire of the Air, at the same time I was completing this biography, unselfishly shared his research with me. He allowed me to read and plunder his manuscript, sent me photocopies of newspaper clippings and other documents (particularly regarding Phonofilm), helped me obtain photographs, and offered all sorts of useful advice and entertaining information. Ellen DuBois graciously sent me newspaper clippings about Nora Blatch de Forest and the woman suffrage campaign of 1913. |
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