DeVry was founded in 1931 as the De Forest Training School in Chicago, Illinois. School founder Herman A. DeVry, who had previously invented a motion picture projector and produced educational and training films, named the school after his friend Lee de Forest. De Forest Training School originally taught projector and radio repair, but later expanded to include other electronic equipment such as televisions. The school was renamed DeVry Technical Institute in 1953 and gained accreditation to confer associate degrees in electronics in 1957.