Control grid in the context of Lee De Forest

A triode is an electronic amplifying vacuum tube (or thermionic valve in British English) consisting of three electrodes inside an evacuated glass envelope: a heated filament or cathode, a grid, and a plate (anode).

Developed from Lee De Forest's 1906 Audion, a partial vacuum tube that added a grid electrode to the thermionic diode (Fleming valve), the triode was the first practical electronic amplifier and the ancestor of other types of vacuum tubes such as the tetrode and pentode. Its invention helped make amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony possible. Triodes were widely used in consumer electronics devices such as radios and televisions until the 1970s, when transistors replaced them. Today, their main remaining use is in high-power RF amplifiers in radio transmitters and industrial RF heating devices. In recent years there has been a resurgence in demand for low power triodes due to renewed interest in tube-type audio equipment by audiophiles who prefer the sound of tube-based electronics.

The Audion is an electronic detecting or amplifying vacuum tube invented by American electrical engineer Lee de Forest as a diode in 1906. Improved, it was patented as the first triode in 1908, consisting of an evacuated glass tube containing three electrodes: a heated filament (the cathode, made out of tantalum), a grid, and a plate (the anode). It is important in the history of technology because it was the first widely used electronic device that could amplify. A low power signal at the grid could control much more power in the plate circuit.

Audions had more residual gas than later vacuum tubes; the residual gas limited the dynamic range and gave the Audion non-linear characteristics and erratic performance. Originally developed as a radio receiver detector by adding a grid electrode to the Fleming valve, it found little use until its amplifying ability was recognized around 1912 by several researchers, who used it to build the first amplifying radio receivers and electronic oscillators. The many practical applications for amplification motivated its rapid development, and the original Audion was superseded within a few years by improved versions with a higher vacuum.

A tetrode is a vacuum tube (called valve in British English) having four active electrodes. The four electrodes in order from the centre are: a thermionic cathode, first and second grids, and a plate (called anode in British English). There are several varieties of tetrodes, the most common being the screen-grid tube and the beam tetrode. In screen-grid tubes and beam tetrodes, the first grid is the control grid and the second grid is the screen grid. In other tetrodes one of the grids is a control grid, while the other may have a variety of functions.

The tetrode was developed in the 1920s by adding an additional grid to the first amplifying vacuum tube, the triode, to correct limitations of the triode. During the period 1913 to 1927, three distinct types of tetrode valves appeared. All had a normal control grid whose function was to act as a primary control for current passing through the tube, but they differed according to the intended function of the other grid. In order of historical appearance these are: the space-charge grid tube, the bi-grid valve, and the screen-grid tube. The last of these appeared in two distinct variants with different areas of application: the screen-grid valve proper, which was used for medium-frequency, small signal amplification, and the beam tetrode which appeared later, and was used for audio or radio-frequency power amplification. The former was quickly superseded by the rf pentode, while the latter was initially developed as an alternative to the pentode as an audio power amplifying device. The beam tetrode was also developed as a high power radio transmitting tube.