In Palo Alto there is a house with a plaque that labels it as the birthplace of electronics. It was in that house in 1912 that Lee de Forest and his collaborators first successfully utilized the vacuum tube to amplify sound. This technology became the basis for radio, radar, television, tape recorders and ultimately electronic computers. De Forest and his associates were working for the Federal Telegraph Co. which had been established in Palo Alto in 1909 by people associated …