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The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

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Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#31

Post by type0 »

johncole wrote: post #10
belZaah wrote: post #8

Thus is the crime of the communist Russia: forcing millions into hard labor to die for progress yet squandering innovation for ideological reasons. But the same mechanism is there in, say, Microsoft. To get the attention of leadership, your idea must have 9 zeros at the very least. If it doesn’t, you either leave M$ or stay there and abandon your idea. But a 7-zero idea is a pretty expensive one to be abandoned.

I don’t think Microsoft is sending people to the gulag because they didn’t have enough zeroes behind their idea.

Their digital Gulag is called Windows and they're forcing most PC users to this abomination of operating system.

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#32

Post by type0 »

weezing wrote: post #23
tokamak wrote: post #16

We will never know the whole truth as that specific culture typically bend the facts and there are little to no proofs of the claims. During soviet era the narrative was that Russian scientists (soviet elites always preferred Russia over other republics) are behind most of human scientific advantages and others simply steal from them.

USSR would be nothing with Ukraine SSR doing the heavy lifting. Russia was just the parasite on top of them.

Yeah, they are even struggling to make ballistic rockets now without the access to Yuzhmash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivdenmash

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#33

Post by AnimalMuppet »

type0 wrote: post #31
johncole wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Microsoft is sending people to the gulag because they didn’t have enough zeroes behind their idea.

Their digital Gulag is called Windows and they're forcing most PC users to this abomination of operating system.

Walking away from Windows means using Linux or Mac. Walking away from the actual gulag was considerably harder.

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#34

Post by 486sx33 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #4
johncole wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who provides such an economic system?

The US, although much less so recently. China, with heavy state subsidies, has also proven to be pretty effective. Interestingly, it hasn't had to embrace immigration because it has over a billion people.

[dead]

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#35

Post by fakedang »

johncole wrote: post #18
fakedang wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint on China - they will import special talent and help them immigrate. And of course, there are people who'll value the lifestyle of Shenzhen over San Francisco, or Shanghai over New York. One example that comes to mind is Dr. Erdal Arikan.

They will never be Chinese or considered Chinese. Has China become more welcoming to foreigners lately?

Most foreigners don't really want citizenship and are content being expats. The ones who do want citizenship are often from countries with weak passports, which often means weak infrastructure, poor HDIs and usually not that much of a skillset that they can bring to the table.

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#37

Post by pseudohadamard »

cpldcpu wrote: post #17

The early discovery of light emission from silicon carbide long before the first LEDs is a very interesting finding, worth pointing out. But alas, as ever so often, the article turns this into a hyperbole. The premise from the title does not check out at all. >The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor#Early_history_of...

There's always someone somewhere who, with hindsight, did something that could be retconned into being similar to something important we've got today, von Däniken being an extreme example. Not putting down Losev's work, but accidentally stumbling on an interesting physical effect that you treat as a curiosity and engaging in targeted research to turn in into a product is a very different thing. For example the FET was envisaged multiple times in the same time frame as Losev's work, but wasn't rigorously pursued until Bardeen et al came along.

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#38

Post by pseudohadamard »

tim333 wrote: post #29
cpldcpu wrote: post #17

The early discovery of light emission from silicon carbide long before the first LEDs is a very interesting finding, worth pointing out. But alas, as ever so often, the article turns this into a hyperbole. The premise from the title does not check out at all. >The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor#Early_history_of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Losev#Solid-state_electro... has quite a bit on it checking out: > He used these junctions to build solid-state versions of amplifiers, oscillators, and TRF and regenerative radio receivers, at frequencies up to 5 MHz, 25 years before the transistor. He even built a superheterodyne receiver. That one calls them "negative resistance diodes" but I don't see how you can make a function…

The USSR famously invented everything the west did but years or even decades earlier, only for some reason never commercialised any of it, to the point where it became a bit of a running joke like the Su-24 "validating" the design of the F-111 which preceded it by some years. So I'd take any claims like this with a bit of a grain of salt.

Re: The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA

#39

Post by pseudohadamard »

wuschel wrote: post #14

> "He was 38. Shortly before his death, he had mailed a manuscript describing a new three-electrode semiconductor device to Physical Review. The paper was lost in the wartime Atlantic. Five years later, Shockley, ..." I wish the article had a reference for that claim. I remember from my childhood that my father told me that in the old soviet system, publications from were invented and dated back in order to demonstra…

Yup, that was definitely a thing, see my other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48451474.
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