"A light-emitting diode (LED)... is an electronic light source. The LED was first invented in Russia in the 1920s, and introduced in America as a practical electronic component in 1962. Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was a radio technician who noticed that diodes used in radio receivers emitted light when current was passed through them. In 1927, he published details in a Russian journal of the first ever LED...."
[wikipedia s.v. "LED"]
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2 comments:
Thanks for that info--but imagine 40 years to finally get marketed/used/installed...an inventor can go 'dead' waiting for his big payday. tsk tsk
Losev published several papers on his invention between 1916 and 1924, as I recall--in Russian, British, and German journals, and was completely ignored.
He even wrote a letter to Albert Einstein, which was never answered.
More recently several American research groups tried to claim his discovery for themselves (each group competing with the other), but at least that has been set right and Losev is now universally recognized as the inventor.
He did obtain a Russian patent as well.
He did not have to wait to starve to death trying to get recognition. He died of starvation in the German siege of Leningrad in 1942 at 39.
Losev, incidentally, was a radio technician without formal education--one of the many cases of untutored geniuses making revolutionary discoveries and not being recognized by the establishment until long after death.
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