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Though People had been experimenting with electricity for many years, it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that scientists began to comprehend how it worked. This increased awareness was probably a result of the invention of the first battery--Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile--in 1800. By using batteries, scientists had a reliable supply of electricity to work with. They began to test the effect of electricity upon chemicals, metals, and other substances in an effort to better understand its nature and, eventually, harness its power. As worldwide trade increased so did the need for instant long-distance communication, and it was the science of electronics that addressed this need. By 1870 Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting with a means for sending a voice signal over a wire. While this was a viable idea, the signal was generally too weak to travel over long distances; a similar problem existed with Guglielmo Marconi's radio, which couldn't put out a signal powerful enough to clearly transmit a human voice. These problems were solved by the invention of the amplifying triode in 1911 and the high-frequency alternator in 1900. Stimulated by the two World Wars, electronic innovations came to dominate technology and industry in the twentieth century. Most electronic devices are based upon combinations of electric circuits. There are many possible components to such a circuit, including resistors (to hinder the current of electricity), capacitors (to store a charge), potentiometers (to control the amount of current), and switches (to prevent or allow a circuit being completed). A circuit can contain one or more of these components, in series or in parallel. As the understanding of electronics grew, the devices used became more and more sophisticated. By the late 1800s scientists were experimenting with Crookes tubes (named after the British scientist William Crookes). One such scientist, Sir John Ambrose Fleming, reconfigured the Crookes tube...