#FF00AA

@drahardja@sfba.social

#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

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-da…