New Scientist Technology Blog

New Scientist Technology Blog: "The LED - older than we thought If you look in an encyclopaedia, the LED was invented by four independent American research groups in 1962. But the latest edition of Nature photonics reveals that it was actually discovered by a little-known Russian genius around 40 years earlier. Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was a radio technician with a fierce talent. In the mid 1920s he noticed that diodes used in radio receivers emitted light when current was passed through them. Then, in 1927, he published details in a Russian journal of the first ever LED. Nikolay Zheludev, at the University of Southampton, has dug up Losev's story."