1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [31]
De Forest, Lee (1873–1961) De Forest was fascinated by mechanics and technology and, as a teenager, was a tinkerer and amateur inventor. De Forest defied his father, who wanted him to study for a career in the clergy, and instead earned a Ph.D. in physics. In 1902, he founded the De Forest Wireless Telegraphy Company, inventing in 1907 the Audion vacuum tube, capable of more sensitive radio reception than existing vacuum tubes. This enabled the live broadcast of radio and also led to such inventions as radar, television, and early computer systems. It was the key electronic component prior to the invention of the transistor in 1947 and ushered in the modern electronic age.
de Kooning, Willem (1904–1997) Born in the Netherlands, de Kooning was active in the New York art scene of the 1950s and became a leading exponent (with Jackson Pollock) of abstract expressionism, abstract painting closely allied to so-called “action painting,” a revolutionary style in which spontaneity and chance figured in dynamic compositions that seemed to reflect the high energy of life at mid 20th century.
Deloria, Vine, Jr. (1933–2005) Born near the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Deloria studied for the Lutheran ministry but earned a law degree instead and served as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians. He published his first book in 1969, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, which attacked Indian stereotypes and took a fresh look at the history of white American western expansionism from the Native point of view. It was the first of his 20 books on historical and cultural issues relating to Native Americans, with emphasis on education and religion.
De Mille, Agnes (1905–1993) The daughter of a playwright and niece of director Cecil B. DeMille, Agnes George De Mille brought into modern American dance elaborate elements of dramatic narrative and incorporated American themes, folklore, popular culture, and folk dance into a new vocabulary of choreography, which transformed modern ballet into choreographic drama and storytelling.
DeMille, Cecil B. (1881–1959) The son of a playwright, DeMille started his career as an actor and got into directing movies in 1914. He developed the genre of the Hollywood spectacle, which used an army of extras playing on vast movie sets to tell epic stories, often of a religious nature. His original silent versions of The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings (1927) were seen by an estimated 800 million people. Critics did not consider DeMille a cinematic artist, but his commercial success propelled him through a 50-year career in which he directed and/or produced 70 films, culminating in his 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments. All contemporary “special effects” mega-budget Hollywood entertainments trace their ancestry to the films of “C.B.”
De Soto, Hernando (1496/95–1542) One of the most famous of the conquistadors, De Soto participated in the Spanish conquests of Central America and Peru and explored a vast swath of what would become the southeastern United States. He was the first European to lay eyes on the Mississippi River (south of modern Memphis, Tennessee). Succumbing to fever, he was buried along that river’s bank.
DeVoto, Bernard (1897–1955) DeVoto wrote in many genres—fiction, criticism, and journalism—but he is best known as a magisterial historian of the American West. DeVoto was not only immersed in the western past, but was deeply concerned about the region’s future, and his monthly column for Harper’s Magazine, “The Easy Chair,” served to make the nation’s public aware of the precious value of the western lands and the necessity for faithful stewardship of them.