
Semiconductor Components
273
Curiosities
The name diode comes from dielectrodes, that is, two electrodes.
Braun (Karl Ferdinand Braun, German inven-
tor, 1850 –1918, Figure 8.21) in 1899 patented a
device made of a single metal wire, wittily called
a cat’s whisker, soft contacting a semiconduc-
tor crystal. The device realized the fundamental
rectifying effect.
In 1909, Braun shared the Nobel Prize in
Physics with Guglielmo Marconi.
A diode can be considered the electrical version
of a mechanical valve and early diodes were actu-
ally called valves. But this was not very accurate,
since mechanical valves are devices by which the
ow of a gas or a liqu ...