For one, it acted like a rectifier, able to turn alternating ... two resistors, and a diode -- all in a single crystal. Unfortunately, they were so tricky to make that Shockley's company, Shockley ...

Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 44, No. 12 (Mar., 1909), pp. 317-349 (34 pages) ...

The crystal in a crystal radio was a rectifier (most often, these days, a germanium diode, which is, a type of crystal). The crystal in a crystal earpiece is a piezoelectric sound transducer.

Rather than the traditional galena crystal and cat’s whisker detector, a pair of1N34A germanium diodes are used as rectifiers — one for demodulating the audio signal, and the other to drive a ...