LED Forty Years Older Than Thought 305
LED lover writes "The discovery of the LED is usually credited to four US groups in 1962, but an unrecognized Russian genius got there forty years before. Oleg Losev even filed a patent on using his device for long range communications, and wrote to Einstein to ask for help with the theory — but got no reply."
How often does this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the conspiracy people things similar to this happen all the time, with the big cooperations making sure that for example things to replace the fossil fuels does never get publicly known, I doubt there is very much truth in this, but this little story might make me think just a little more of the conspiracy theories.
If Einstein didn't react to this, I wonder how many other great discoveries that just perish because no one reacts to them?
I don't blame Einstein, I bet there was a lot of more or less intelligent nut cases who contacted him with all kinds of "great ideas" and "energy machines" all the time, had he been reacting to it all he would probably have had far less time to work on his own theories.
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:5, Funny)
You have a... "unique" definition of the word "free".
Off-topic (Score:3, Insightful)
Lobbyists buying laws that help their clients reduce outside innovation and competition while weakening an individuals (DMCA).
Or how the courts can be used to hamstring competitors because the government approves vague, bullshit patents (Verizon v. Vonage is the obvious one right now, how many others have been posted here over the years?).
Oh the irony for what has become of a country born of its desire to cast off
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Only if their family & friends are wealthy, their banker is into lending money to small business startups (9 out of 10 fail, remember), or they are stupid enough to want to take a big chance on losing their house. MOST people don't have those advantages in a free market- most people barely make enou
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
It costs more to supress an invention than to market it. Suppose corporation A and corp B are bidding for the proverbial great-invention-by-a-lonely-genius. Corp A wants to develop it, and corp B wants to supress it. Corp A can bid more because they intend to make a profit on it even after development expenses. So their net cost to buy is lower. Also, they get to use the patents on the technology to cut B out of the market.
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dreaming in technicolor (Score:3, Insightful)
Rather the response is, "how can we exploit this idea to the max" and "how can improve on this idea". If we aren't allowed to exploit the idea, then we ask "how
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Dreaming in technicolor (Score:5, Insightful)
I could also go into the economics of why one person saying they would buy an electric car doesn't help a society that works off of the principles of mass production, but I would just bore myself to sleep. Rather, I suggest that you (and all of these other people who would like, totally get an electric car, fer sure! could - and I'm just putting it out there - buy an electric car.
Or maybe you want to buy one in a different store, like Wal Mart? In which case, I can highly recommend this high-tech model [fisher-price.com].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really think that a bunch of companies that are normally at each others throats would cooperate in this way? Even one company failing to cooperate would screw it up for everyone. If a company sees a big, juicy market the other companies are ignoring, believe me they'll go for it.
Far more likely
Re:Dreaming in technicolor (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe he thinks those electric cars suck (it's ok, a lot of other people think that too - but the Roadster and the Volt look pretty cool to me), he'd rather have a electric Civic or something like that. It's too bad there is a conspiracy to keep people from converting their existing cars to electricity. Oh, wait, no there isn't [electroauto.com].
Google is the friend of the ranter... it keeps you from looking retarded.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not anti-corporation. I love corporations, capitalism, and money. But, one of the main reasons ideas like this get buried is because the person explaining the idea is incapable of explaining it to those who would back him/her. Call it PHB syndrome.
Saw this at HP. Someone comes up with a brilliant piece of technology. It goes nowhere. Two years later, another person with some added marketing ability comes up with the same idea and it takes off. Then the first person says, "But, I came up with that, here are the drawings and emails." Sure enough, he did, but it was so misunderstood at the time that nobody could grasp the idea.
Also, placing yourself in a good position to be heard helps. One guy at HP was a world class crackpot. For every good idea he had, he was flooding his managers with 100 ideas that ran the gamout from Rube Goldberg, conspiracies, implementation prohibitive schemes to down-right illegal-by-the-laws-of-physics-and-animal-husbandr y. Needless to say, he was ignored most of the time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you really think government control can match money and brains any better? We can barely get politicians smart enough to wipe their own asses, but you want to turn over the economy to them? Hah! The free market may not be an inefficient allocator of goods, but it runs rings around any other system that's been tried.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, in fact they're doing a better-than-decent job of separating me from my money (not that I'm all that brainy, but still...)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every non free-market solution requires the hand of go
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Only if anonymity was illegal and that government control was a nearly omnipresent artificial intelligence programmed to treat everybody equally
We can barely get politicians smart enough to wipe their own asses, but you want to turn over the economy to them?
A government doesn't need to be made up of human politicians.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all people are people. I should know- I'm one of the 1/186 people who aren't. Autism is considered a defect by the rest of you- but I know better. My lack of empathy allows me to see things in a VERY different way- and not take stupid emotions like greed into account. We're already superior to you NTs who lie, cheat, and steal.
Re: (Score:2)
One of many theories- I don't pretend to know which is correct. The one I'm working on now is the "pool resources to buy a commune" theory.
And yeah exchanging ideas is a form of service trade, taking away jobs from LED inventors.
Yes it is. I didn't say that the inefficency is neccessarily bad, just inefficient.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Open up a transistor or diode and you can get a few hundred millivolts off the surface. Some diode junctions will transmit a red or infrared light.
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:5, Funny)
While using a glass diode in my 150-in-1 kit, I independently discovered bright white LEDs about 30 years ago. The only problem is that the light only lasted about 1/2 second, and then it was followed by a little puff of smoke.
Re:How often does this happen? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't blame Einstein, I bet there was a lot of more or less intelligent nut cases who contacted him with all kinds of "great ideas" and "energy machines" all the time, had he been reacting to it all he would probably have had far less time to work on his own theories.
Besides, Einstein was a physicist, not an engineer. Perhaps he should have been talking to Norbert Wiener, or Vannevar Bush, if he were interested in applications.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The short answer is a new one every day!
Working on the energy problem I have become aware every day how things can be known and yet nothing done about them. I know of 11 technologies that all work quite well and all of them produce energy without fuel. It is like pulling teeth and as popular as do it yourself root canal work to get investors to pony up to get any work done. Then come the "Physics Police." These are people
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
By 1927, Einstein's interest in quantum mechanics was strongly waning. It was during this general time period that he developed his rather militant views on the interpretations of quantum collapse and uttered the famous quote "God does not play dice." His work on general relativity was coming strongly to the forefront as physicists started to apply its mathematical principles in earnest to a wide range of problems. The search for a grand unified theory of all forces would essentially consume the remainder o
At least he got his name in the story (Score:5, Insightful)
What's next.. ? (Score:5, Funny)
the first man in space was Russian as well...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
the first man in space was Russian as well...
It's not so easy as all that! You can't just willy-nilly put some guy into space. First they'd have to put up some type of artificial 'satellite' type object, along the lines of the idea by that sci-fi writer Clarke, though I dunno, it seems like a pretty far-out idea. But, if they can get that to work, they should send up an animal, perhaps a monkey, or, I dunno, a dog or something. One thing's for sure - any space explorer, or 'cosmonaut' for lack
Doesn't matter (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Henry Round the real inventor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Henry Round the real inventor? (Score:5, Funny)
something like: I discovered that semiconductors can produce light, I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
He probably didn't realize that the light emission from semiconductors could be useful.
How is this modded insightful? I'll grant that this may have been true at first, but TFA goes on to say:
Most significantly, in 1927 Losev filed a patent for a 'light relay' that used his devices 'for fast telegraphic and telephone communication, transmission of images and other applications...'
It sounds like he found a couple applications where it could indeed be useful...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some of them throw off plenty of light even in their normal operation. Consider gas rectifiers and voltage regulators as examples, or many directly-heated tubes. The 80 [alfter.us] in my tube tester lights up almost like a lightbulb (this page [jt30.com] says the filament pulls 10W, which is more than your average nightlight).
Re: (Score:2)
Only if they have glass envelopes. There are plenty of vacuum tubes that had metal envelopes (as mentioned in the very same reference you gave), and they emit nothing but heat. Metal tubes were often seen in '40s-'50s auto radios and in the cheap "All American 5" AC/DC sets, and are still common in high-power applications.
Big difference between theory and building (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Big difference between theory and building (Score:4, Insightful)
That sort of thing happens frequently. An experimental physicist or engineer notices a phenomena in the lab, can reproduce it, and can think of uses for it. He or she can't however, mathematically prove why it happens. Then, a theoretical physicist (probably working at the same company or university) comes up with a mathematical model to explain the phenomena. Together, they file for and receive a patent.
However, the patent process doesn't require mathematical proof to patent something, so Losev seems to have met all the requirements to patent a new invention.
Let's call them (Score:2, Funny)
Patents (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
invent
1.to originate or create as a product of one's own ingenuity, experimentation, or contrivance: to invent the telegraph.
The groups that invented them in '62 definitely created LEDs as a product of their own ingenuity, experimentation, and contrivance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't. Any action that makes it available to the world furthers technological growth. Unless, of course, the patent lasts too long, which is a legitimate problem. I think the problem with your attitude is in "I have an option of doing the work myself." The work of inventing is far greater than the work needed to manufacture, and reproducing it would generally lead to a different
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like saying that you shouldn't be able to patent a jet engine because somebody figured out how to turn fuel into mechanical energy before.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Einstein's Quantum Theory? (Score:5, Informative)
Einstein *did* develop the quantum theory in question. He got his Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect.
Lightbulb! (Score:5, Funny)
Transistor? (Score:2)
Semiconductor amplifiers predate transistors (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently, when the article is actually set in Soviet Russia, it takes all the sport out of it.
University academics (Score:3, Insightful)
Russians invent everything. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Russians invent everything. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
But did he MAKE one, yes or no? (Score:2)
So... (Score:4, Funny)
Zheludev's paper (Score:4, Informative)
Zheludev, N.I. The life and times of the LED - a 100-year history. Nature Photonics 1(4), 189-192 (2007) pdf file (1.7MB) [nanophotonics.org.uk]
Another Russian (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
It's kind of sweet and sad, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
So he thinks - who is the greatest mind in physics? He asks his wife, Tonya -
"Olga, darling, I think I will contact EINSTEIN about my great glowing semiconductor idea!"
Olga replies, "Sure honey. He's really smart. And well connected, especially since they've been confirming his ideas left and right. sounds good to me!"
So, with great pride and hope, Losev licks the stamp on the letter and walks down the street to set it off. He holds it to his heart before he puts it in the post box, and makes a small hope that Einstein will see the beauty of his idea and help him, then with finality and hope, he puts the letter in the box.
Then he and Olga went to go boil some rats for dinner, because Russia in 1922 was a freakin' mess.
RS
Re: (Score:2)
Just great. Thanks a lot. (Score:4, Funny)
Prior art (Score:2)
inventions (Score:2)
Anyone know Russian? ru.wikipedia.com needs help (Score:2, Informative)
This article [ioffe.ru] is in Russian and is a good place to start. Here's the English [altavista.com] translation, which comes out as "Oleg Vladimirovich losev - pioneer of the semiconductor electronics (to the century from the birthday)."
1922 Diode == 2 electrode Vacuum tube (Score:2, Informative)
Although, come to think of it, there were Germanium diodes at the time, so it could have been something more semiconductor-related, but the article isn't clear.
Obligatory Star Trek Quote (Score:3, Funny)
What about the LEEPROM? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't believe this (Score:5, Informative)
In Soviet Russia (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
How many american inventors have died poor, because they were ahead of their times, while their creations are still important today?
Not to speak of scientific research, whose results ofter start to be profitable decades or even centuries after the developement of a theory.