[Governor Dinwiddie]

Ahh yes, I do remember that from my days of working mesh equations. Never forgot. About 0.2 volts Vbe for germanium, and abut 0.6 to 0.7 volts for silicon. Might not seem like much, but in high power applications it was important,

Ironically for years the only place you could find germanium was in small signal diodes like the ubiquitous 1N25, and in very high power transmission line rectifiers used by the power companies (where the lower Vbe was significant).

[GingisK]

That small voltage drop is very useful when making crystal radios, or any small signal front end.