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."

Comments

How often does this happen?

[Reverse Gear]

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.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm as anti-corporation as anybody- but I don't think inventions are supressed on purpose. I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough. In fact, as time goes on and the standard of living becomes more expensive, brains and money will become MORE mismatched, not less, as many brilliant inventors are only brilliant for a 30 year window between the ages of 10 and 40 (peaking at 21) and then spend several decades struggling to get their brilliant ideas to market. With the cost of living going up, this will only get worse- as people at the begining of their career earn a lot less than people at the end of their career. The Venture Capital (or Vulture Capital) game can short circuit this somewhat, of course, but the problem is still matching up the old money people with the young inventors when they don't even move in the same social circles.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Waffle Iron]

Light emitted by a diode is a common side effect, usually undesirable.

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?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Looks like you invented the SED. Did you patent it?

Re:How often does this happen?

[Harmonious Botch]

I'm as pro-corporation as anybody- but I don't think inventions are supressed on purpose, either. One of the beauties of a free market is that brains and money can get matched together so readily. ( Imagine an inventor trying to get a job in some othe part of Stalinist Russia where you had to have the government's permision to move )

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?

[zero_offset]

a free market with a single Venture Capitalist (the state party chairman) through whom ALL requests for money to develop an invention must go through

You have a... "unique" definition of the word "free".

Re:How often does this happen?

[WED Fan]

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:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough.

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:How often does this happen?

[polar red]

And when corp B has an interest in selling its more expensive, more lucrative invention that predates this invention ? Or what if ALL relevant companies have an interest to use the older technology - like say the oil and car companies have in petrol ?

At least he got his name in the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike "some Indian guy"

What's next.. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess,
the first man in space was Russian as well...

Doesn't matter

[Apocalypse111]

It doesn't matter how old the LED gets, if you ask it it will always tell you its 40.

Henry Round the real inventor?

[whoever57]

Zheludev also points out notes that Henry Round, an assitant to radio pioneer Marconi, was the first to discover that semiconductors could produce light, some hundred years ago. He published only a very short note on the matter and made no further investigations. The piece was never seen by Losev, who must be retrospectively declared the inventor of the LED.

Why should not Henry Round be declared the inventor? Also, how on earth can we know that Losev did not see Round's note?

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[laejoh]

He published only a very short note

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?

Big difference between theory and building

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[SydShamino]

You got it backwards. He made the devices and came up with applications, but he couldn't do the theory. That's why he tried to get Einstein's help.

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.

Lightbulb!

[Liquidscript]

So LEDs precede thought? No wonder people always draw light bulbs over people's heads when they get an idea.

University academics

[Toffins]

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.

Russians invent everything.

[Grashnak]

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.

Re:Russians invent everything.

[sehlat]

I seem to remember there was a line about this in Tolstoy's "Hamlet."

Re:Einstein's Quantum Theory?

[jonnythan]

Nope.

Einstein *did* develop the quantum theory in question. He got his Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect.

Re:Patents

[pushing-robot]

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.

So...

[thedeadswiss]

So, we were misLED...

Re:Patents

[ResidntGeek]

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.

Zheludev's paper

[Toffins]

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)

It's kind of sweet and sad, really.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I could imagine Losev (four letters away from Loser) coming up with an obvious and brilliant idea. And he sits there and thinks - "This is SUCH A GREAT IDEA! I must contact the greatest mind in physics and see if he can confirm this great idea and perhaps GREAT THINGS will happen of it! Excellent!"

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

Just great. Thanks a lot.

[jpellino]

So those LEDs that were supposed to have 11 year life spans are now going to wink out any minu

Obligatory Star Trek Quote

[mattt79]

Chekov: Everybody knows the LED was invented by a little old lady in Leningrad.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[DAtkins]

Ummm, actually I don't believe that you would buy one immediately. Why would I question your statement? Because there are already companies that make electric cars and yet you complain that there aren't any.

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.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[DAtkins]

Hey now, don't give him crap. He just doesn't know how to use google to actually look up the thing he is ranting about. Heck, the very first search page turns up Tesla Motors, the REVA, and freakin' Global Electric Motorcars, which is a Chrysler company, or even the upcoming Chevy Volt.

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.

Google is the friend of the ranter... it keeps you from looking retarded.

Don't believe this

[Laaserboy]

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.