The technical world waited for production. In 1959, a year after General Electric announced the silicon-controlled rectifier, a device that was to enjoy stunning success, the company also announced that it planned to offer experimental samples of tunnel diodes. N.Y. Suits stressed the speed of the device. Going further, Suits predicted that the tunnel diode's unique properties, including negative resistance over part of its operating-voltage range, would allow its use as an amplifier, an RF power generator and a switching device. He added that its simplicity made possible development of integrated circuits, in which entire circuits for some applications could be formed on a single semiconductor structure.
Negative resistance is what intrigued engineers.
For part of the tunnel diode's operating range, an increase of bias voltage resulted in a decrease in current, a very rapid decrease, then an increase again. This was the authoritative article. Anybody who was anybody in the field read it. Articles appeared in the 1959 Wescon Convention Record , in Electronics magazine , in Electronic Design , in EDN . Leading electronics publications begged for articles on tunnel diodes and rushed them into print.