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LED Forty Years Older Than Thought
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."
I wonder how many very useful ideas like this one there is lying around right now? Probably quite a few.
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.
Unlike "some Indian guy"
Let me guess,
the first man in space was Russian as well...
It doesn't matter how old the LED gets, if you ask it it will always tell you its 40.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
LEDs are not older than we thought. LEDs were built when theory was turned into reality by those that get proper credit for those accomplishments. Sounds like the concept behind LEDs may be 40 years older, and props to Losev, but he didn't make any.
OL-LEDs, in his honour.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So LEDs precede thought? No wonder people always draw light bulbs over people's heads when they get an idea.
... The LED lights you up.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
University academics, especially prominent scientists, often tend to discard letters and emails discussing or querying scientific concepts and experimental results if the communication comes from a stranger who does not have an affiliation to any recognized research organization. This is often due to lack of time or a desire not to get involved in "crackpot" theories. It can also unfortunately be due to academic snobbery.
Those of you who remember the good old cold war days will recall that the Soviets can be credited with inventing the LED, television, ramen noodles, california rolls, snow tires, the hanging curveball, and pants.
Life needs more saving throws.
Nope.
Einstein *did* develop the quantum theory in question. He got his Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect.
Even if he had created working prototypes, LEDs vary widely from each other. It's taken decades and millions (billions?) of dollars to produce the current spectrum of LEDs out of a wide range of chemicals and substrates. All that research didn't "invent" anything?
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.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
So, we were misLED...
If the inventor of MP3 had worked away from the audio encoding community and had not been published nor contributed to audio encoding technologies in any way, and you had reproduced the essentials of the work independently, you would and should have been granted a patent, yes. You'd have made a very important contribution to the world through your own work, a contribution which did not and would not have happened from the work of the earlier inventor, and your invention would have been protecte for a time. That's the way it's supposed to work.
ResidntGeek
Link to the Zheludev paper:
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)
Here's another Russian who was ahead of his time.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
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
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
So those LEDs that were supposed to have 11 year life spans are now going to wink out any minu
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I didn't read any of the MP3 patents, but I see that they are not making their work available to the important open source community. So, I am going to invite a bunch of people to compare uncompressed vs compressed music and independently develop an algorithm to strip off waveforms that don't seem to matter as much as others. This algorithm may or may not share some concepts with MP3. But, according to you, I should get a patent for it anyway. After all, I made a very important contribution to the world through my own work, a contribution that wouldn't have happened from the work of the earlier inventor.
There's a brand-spanking-new Wikipedia article on him but nothing in the Russian Wikipedia for " " or " ."
This article is in Russian and is a good place to start. Here's the English translation, which comes out as "Oleg Vladimirovich losev - pioneer of the semiconductor electronics (to the century from the birthday)."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Chekov: Everybody knows the LED was invented by a little old lady in Leningrad.
I work for an R&D department in a corporation. When we see a good idea that might cut into the profits of our existing products, do we say "Okay, how can we suppress this?" Never. Such a suggestion would be the height of absurdity. A corporation that tries to fight the tide of innovation is doomed. Whatsmore, no one would want to work for it.
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 can we come up with an even better idea".
The idea of a company trying to keep a good idea down is pure fiction. I have never seen it in practise in my company. It's just not workable in practice.
Somebody in one of my college labs plugged an erasable programmable ROM (the kind with the clear window over the die for the UV erasure; who remembers those?) into its socket backwards, reversing power and ground, thereby inventing the light-emitting EPROM. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a one-time use device.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
This thread has made me wonder how "free" our market really is when you consider the following:
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 the shackles of oppressive rulers and a stifling social order. Today we the huddled masses, allow our "rulers" and social elite to conspire in ways that strip away ideals we have been indoctrinated to stand up for, but simply take for granted.
The United States has lost touch with its soul.
No sig for you!!
I have a Ph.D. in semiconductor physics. I worked in one of the labs mentioned in the article. I have to tell you that the description in Nature is really inaccurate. What the Russian likely did is luminesce off a trap in SiC, not off the full bandgap. SiC is not even a direct-bandgap crystal. Yes, it produces blue-green light. It is a point-contact diode, but it is NOT an LED. Nothing practical or useful existed until Nick Holonyak made the first visible LED, then the first visible LED laser a few months later. Bob Hall made the first LED laser. There were a bunch of guys with Ge infrared-emitting diodes before 1962, but history forgets these guys rightly. Both the SiC and Ge diodes are such poor light emitters, that they should not be considered LEDs. Another interesting moment I believe was in the 1960s. Researchers in America claimed to have a working, continuous, non-pulsed room temperature SiC laser. It looked like beautiful blue laser light, but it was a big bust. It was not a laser. Just like this Russian, there was nothing useful going on in SiC.
High tech, complex invertions that don't obviously benefit "The Industry" can pretty predictably be expected to languish in circumstances like ours.
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.
.... patents file you!
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.