Who else thought that when they first started taking about nuclear power plants that they could somehow create electricity directly from the reaction?

It seems a simple concept, start a reaction and siphon off the electrons.  But that is nothing like what we got with the nuclear pile of every modern reactor simply serving as a heat source for more common generating concepts ... steam generation. How fucking old is that concept.

Did we really miss or skip a step here?

 Who else thought that when they first started taking about nuclear power plants that they could somehow create electricity directly from the reaction?

It seems a simple concept, start a reaction and siphon off the electrons.  But that is nothing like what we got with the nuclear pile of every modern reactor simply serving as a heat source for more common generating concepts ... steam generation. How fucking old is that concept.

Did we really miss or skip a step here?