Lee Dc Forest was one of the truly innovative pioneers in radio broadcasting. His invention of the three-element grid audion tube, or triode, greatly advanced the technology of radio reception and was the forerunner of the vacuum tube, which would be central to mass-produced radios. In 1915 he erected a 125-foot tower on top of his factory and workshop in the Bronx and began nightly half-hour "concerts" of phonograph music. That fall he broadcast the Harvard-Yale football game. On Election Day 1916 De Forest provided six hours of coverage of the neck-and-neck presidential race between the sitting president, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and Republican Charles Evans Hughes. When De Forest signed off at 11 P.M., he declared that Hughes had been elected president, only to learn in the morning, with the rest of the nation, that Wilson was the victor.

Source: Susan Douglas. Inventing American Broadcdsting. 1899—1922 (Baltimore...