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History of the LED — the Movie

Posted by timothy on from the some-dude's-bright-idea dept.

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."

5 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Best not to overdrive them though by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Once when I was a very young geek I had an array of LEDs set up for some purpose. I accidently added 10V to the power supply due to a lack of attention and bad UI design. Every single LED burst. It smelt horrible and I got out of there fast. Switched off the power supply first though.

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    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. Baby Blues. by Ostracus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Interesting. Thing I wonder is I remember when blue LEDS were difficult and expensive to produce. Now almost every piece of equipment I have has a blue LED on it.

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    Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
    1. Re:Baby Blues. by MarkRose · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Except when some marketing genius decided to make the standby light a blue one...

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      Be relentless!
  3. Re:warning don't try at home! by Sanat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I was a kid we would take a blue blade (old type of razor blade) and a piece of graphite from a lead pencil and by judiciously touching it just right would act as a diode and thus a receiver.

    We made a one piece headset from a cardboard tack box and would wrap wire around a form with a small magnet glued inside on one side of the tackbox and the coil glued to the other side.

    The first portable radio I ever saw other than the home made variety had small tubes in them and ran on batteries.

         

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    And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
  4. Foxhole Radio by EkriirkE · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Soldiers in the (first) 2 World Wars used to make radios out of rusted razors, a safety pin (a cat's whisker diode) and a coil of wire (to tune)

    http://bizarrelabs.com/foxhole.htm

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