Inventing The Future: The Beginning of LED Lights
It was back in the 60s when the American scientist Nick Holonyak Jr. created the first visible light-emitting diode, or “the magic one” as they called it when it first came out. He was doing exploratory work with a small group of scientists, which means they were inventing devices and writing all kinds of new engineer and physics theories. So in 1962 Holonyak together with his scientists made an exciting device that was better than anything the world had seen before: a visible semiconductor alloy laser – the device that illuminated the first visible LED. The newspapers were talking about a dramatic laser discovery that may one day make the electric light obsolete. The world was impressed by the “lamp of the future” that was just a speck of metal the size of a knife – point, or what we today call light – emitting diode or LED.
Holonyak’s diode emitted only red light, but thanks to many other enthusiastic young scientists and many of them his students, the world of LED today offers a multi-colored spectrum of lights that illuminate our cities and our homes. But according to Nick Holonyak, the red light was only the beginning and he’s not far from the truth. What they discovered was a very powerful thing and in the future the red light converted to a white light that became very popular once it came on the market.
Thanks to these amazing minds that were thinking outside the box and believed that they could create things with knowledge, today we have all kinds of LED lights, from home LEDs to LED working lights and they are literally everywhere. They provide lighting in a variety of electronic devices including exit signs, TVs, elevator buttons, PCs, airport lights etc. The high brightness and long life makes LED working lights and home lights suitable for illuminating the garden, the hallway and any room in your home.
All the way back at the beginning of it all Holonyak had an instinct that these efficient little sources of light could replace the incandescent light bulbs that were the only sources of illumination for the world back then. His drive to explore led to a great number of innovations and when you think about it, it’s rather amazing imagining the young Holonyak and his group of scientists believing in themselves, in their creations and in the idea to change the world. However, they definitely didn’t think that LED lights would become such a big thing in the next 50 years. They gave the world much more time for adapting to the new technology that was born in their laboratory, but it seems humankind was eager to experience something new and exciting as soon as possible. Because that’s what LEDs were back in the first years of their production: exciting, futuristic lights that reminded people of the Star Wars movies. It’s impressive when you think that the 50 year old “magic one” became such a necessity in our everyday lives, so when you purchase your next LED working lights or your home LED lights, think about the revolution they started in the lighting world thanks to their modern creator and dreamer Nick Holonyak and his enthusiastic group of scientists.