50 years ago this fall, GE physicist Nick Holonyak built the world's first LED. Holonyak's diode emitted only red light. (see note 1)
Besides off/on indicator lights in electronics front panels, we haven't seen that much of the LED, until recently. Then strange applications began to pop up, like tiny blinking lights in children's shoes, and blinkers and decorative lighting on high-end cars. Then a big one -- LED flashlights that stayed bright a long long time.
Today, multi-colored LEDs illuminate homes and cities, the latest iPad “retina” screens, and flat-screen TVs. You can even buy a 750+ lumen (very bright) LED bicycle headlight to train at night (during winter) for your next bike race. People are doing it!
Of course, advances in LED technology have made this all possible, such as much greater brightness per watt, multiple colors, dimming, and improved multi LED packaging. Benefits of energy savings (75-80% over incandescent), brightness without halogen heat, ruggedness, and a 10-year bulb life put LED way ahead of incandescent and (more recent) florescent.
We like to see improvements in a technology that enable it to leap to the forefront. Everybody benefits.
30 years ago, people predicted that magnetics for signal conditioning would become obsolete for applications above 35 Mhz, because of increasing parasitic capacitance with increasing frequency. We're going way past that these days, because of improvements in our own design and manufacturing techniques.
How far past? The answer keeps changing. Ask our people at Raycom Electronics (http://www.raycomelectronics.com/).
Note 1: http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/emea/news-and-media/news/First-LED-by-the-GE-engineer-Nick-Holonyak.jsp#sthash.R2GAmWxc.dpuf)
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