#Veritasium published an AWESOME video about the very unlikely invention of the blue LED. It’s an *incredible* story and you really should view it. It also contains the best visualization of semiconductors I’ve ever seen.
I witnessed the drama of the blue LED live in the 1990s. I watched tech magazines show dim blue prototypes for years until Nichia suddenly burst on the scenes with a bright blue LED and it changed the world. I watched as they created their first white LEDs ($1 apiece) which I gawked at in person. I was at Honeywell when they finally made white LEDs in surface-mount format (still $1 apiece). We used 50 of them as the backlight in the aviation GPS navigator I worked on (at $50 the backlight was one of the most expensive components in the whole system). They were so hot (100 mW each for a total of 5 W) we used them as *heaters* when the unit was below operating temperatures.
When I read about how Nakamura got screwed by Nichia, I was livid.
#technology #history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M
Dave Rahardja /
npub13j…75d7q
2024-02-09 04:53:44
Author Public Key
npub13jszgr40d0pnyum0t845scy8uggn676enygvaf4ajzm2y9rqzd8sy75d7qPublished at
2024-02-09 04:53:44Event JSON
{
"id": "89ec310572f9f987772cb9a1cccb46bb2cb86ae7566bd598284484bbee1e2d6e",
"pubkey": "8ca0240eaf6bc332736f59eb486087e2113d7b599910cea6bd90b6a21460134f",
"created_at": 1707454424,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"t",
"Veritasium"
],
[
"t",
"technology"
],
[
"t",
"history"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://sfba.social/users/drahardja/statuses/111899733157601138",
"activitypub"
]
],
"content": "#Veritasium published an AWESOME video about the very unlikely invention of the blue LED. It’s an *incredible* story and you really should view it. It also contains the best visualization of semiconductors I’ve ever seen.\n\nI witnessed the drama of the blue LED live in the 1990s. I watched tech magazines show dim blue prototypes for years until Nichia suddenly burst on the scenes with a bright blue LED and it changed the world. I watched as they created their first white LEDs ($1 apiece) which I gawked at in person. I was at Honeywell when they finally made white LEDs in surface-mount format (still $1 apiece). We used 50 of them as the backlight in the aviation GPS navigator I worked on (at $50 the backlight was one of the most expensive components in the whole system). They were so hot (100 mW each for a total of 5 W) we used them as *heaters* when the unit was below operating temperatures.\n\nWhen I read about how Nakamura got screwed by Nichia, I was livid.\n\n#technology #history \n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M",
"sig": "88f5adda891d7fdb46fce24efb301b3f031ca1aae5b07cc91ed3f3f86977ed5f472bfda109c9ec63df0323953be4a044524e006f4ec8c05499debe41c37b0750"
}