LED kommt wohl doch nicht aus Ami-Land

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.
[...]
Losev also published on his discoveries in German and British journals. In sixteen papers between 1924 and 1930 he comprehensively detailed the function of his LED. He used Einstein's then new quantum theory to explain the way electrons dropping in energy produced the light without releasing heat. But a letter he wrote to Einstein asking for help developing the theory of LEDs received no reply.

Most significantly, in 1927 Losev filed a patent for a 'light relay' that used his devices 'for fast telegraphic and telephone communication, transmission of images and other applications...' He therefore foreshadowed the development of opto-electronics, which is fundamental to the fibreoptic links that make modern communcations possible.

[New Scientist Technology Blog, 11.04.2007]

Irgendwie gönne ich es den Sowjets. (@F.: Danke für den Link!)