John Ambrose Fleming

Sir John Ambrose Fleming (1849 to 1945) was a British electrical engineer and physicist, born in Lancaster and trained at University College London and at Cambridge under James Clerk Maxwell. He became the first head of the Department of Electrical Technology at University College London in 1885 and taught there until 1927. Hired by the Marconi Company, he designed the large spark transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall that sent the first transatlantic radio signal in December 1901. In 1904 he built the two-electrode vacuum tube he called the oscillation valve, now known as the Fleming valve, which is often regarded as the beginning of electronics and served in radio receivers and radar for decades. He also set out the right-hand rule used in physics, and he fought a long patent dispute with Lee De Forest over the Audion. Late in life he promoted television and argued against evolution as a committed Christian creationist.