The four-layer diode was the key to William Shockley's plan to revolutionize AT&T's phone system. It was a great device in theory, but not in practice -- at least not at the time when Shockley wanted ...

Diodes today are solid-state devices, but in the beginning of the electronics age, they were crystals, as it was the German physicist Ferdinand Braun who first discovered in 1874 that crystals had ...