History of the LED — the Movie 106
ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine has a fantastic 'Connections'-style video called THE LED — The short documentary has the history of the LED to modern day applications. Starting with the work of Russian Oleg Vladimirovich Losev, which was largely ignored in the 1920s, to making your own 'Cat's Whisker' — a primitive LED made from a metal-semiconductor point-contact junction forming a Schottky barrier diode. The first practical visible-spectrum LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., while working at General Electric Company."
Re:Baby Blues. (Score:2, Insightful)
Blue LEDs have the highest intensity.
Also, they look cool, and now they are affordable. I mean, you couldn't get them, now you can, therefore you do.
Risky Business (Score:2, Insightful)
It's too bad the narrator tried to demonstrate his circuit-design skills. Near the end of the video he powers an LED by connecting it directly across a disc battery. The only reason he didn't burn up his LED is because the voltages and temperatures were just right, but even that lucky break might have evaporated over a matter of minutes as the LED warmed up. When operating LEDs, you always want to have a current-limiting resistor or circuit in place -- always. The reason is that an LED's voltage/current/temperature relationship contradicts naive assumptions about electrical conductors.
To say this concisely, unless you have an unlimited semiconductor budget, "boys and girls, don't try this at home!"
He's no James Burke (Score:3, Insightful)