Researchers from HP Labs say that they have proven the existence of the previously only theorized fourth fundamental circuit element in electrical engineering. The Information and Quantum Systems Lab, led by R. Stanley Williams, presented the mathematical model and a physical example of a "memristor" - a blend of "memory resistor" - which has the unique property of retaining a history of the information it has acquired. Leon Chua of the UC Berkeley initially theorized about and named the element in an academic paper published 37 years ago. Chua argued that the memristor was the fourth fundamental circuit element, along with the resistor, capacitor and inductor, and that it had properties that could not be duplicated by any combination of the other three elements.
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