- Inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, which was a key component of all major communication devices (radio, telephone, radar, television) prior to the invention of the transistor.
- Developed a way to synchronize sound on film called Phonofilm in 1923, which became the basis for the introduction of talking pictures in 1927.
- His phonofilm sound films caught the first sound footage of a President of the United States on film in 1924. Filmed on August 11 with a special battery operated camera and sound recorder, President Calvin Coolidge spoke on film about taxation (with wildly inflated figures that did not match real tax statistics). It was intended to be used as a campaign aid in Coolidge's re-election that year. Ironically Coolidge's nickname was "Silent Cal.".
- More than 175 short films were made in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process between 1921 and 1929. Surviving titles are at the Library of Congress, the British Film Institute, and the national film archives of Australia, Spain, and Argentina.
- Preident of De Forest Phonofilm Inc., a production company active from 1922-1927.
- Co-founder (w/Max Fleischer, Edwin Miles Fadman, Hugo Riesenfeld) Red Seal Pictures Corp., a distribution company formed in 1926.
- First to broadcast the voice of Enrico Caruso and to relay the first radio news bulletin in 1916.
- Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, 1977.
- Cousin of actress Bebe Daniels.
- His Audion vacuum tube is pictured on an 11¢ US airmail postage stamp in the Progress in Electronics series, issued 10 July 1973.
- For memorabilia of the DeForests: Miracles in Trust, The Penham Foundation, 101 First Street, Suite 394, Los Altos, CA 94022.
- Received a Ph.D. from Yale University.
- Survived by his widow, Marie Mosquini, and three daughters: Harriet of Greenwich, Conn.; Mrs. Eleanor Peck of Santa Monica; Mrs. Marilyn Culver of Albuquerque, N.M.; and six grandchildren.
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