Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

Off-topic Chatter
1

Found this stumbling around on Youtube, I found it interesting and thought some of you guys might so posted it.

7 Thanks
2

Gets posted on Reddit r/flashlight every few hours since it was published. We had it here at BLF as well, for example:

3

I’ve noticed that blue LED’s in my strings of Christmas lights fail or become dim more often than any other color. Don’t know why that is.

slmjim

4

I hadn’t seen it before. A good watch, in any case. Glad it was posted here.

1 Thank
5

What do we learn from this: never trust your employer. And never rely on being properly remunerated for your efforts or receiving the recognition you deserve for your work.

6

I also stumbled on this video/short documentary (by accident) and really enjoyed watching it! I can really recommend it to take the (roughly) 30 minutes and watch it!

I also (immediately) thought of posting it on BLF, since I think it’s really interesting (and relevant) information of a integral/essential part of modern day flashlights, which plays such an important role in our hobby!

Fascinating and inspiring story about mr. Nakamura (‘nowadays’ with a PhD., Nobel prize and nearly 500 published papers!) and how driven and ‘stubborn’ he was in succeeding to create a working/efficient (and commercially viable) blue LED!

So certainly worth watching this video/documentary, in my opinion!

3 Thanks
7

I really enjoyed that, fascinating stuff.

Back in the early 90’s I was reading an article in Performance Bikes magazine about a custom motorbike someone had built. One thing that very quickly leapt out at the journalist was the blue LED on the instrument panel, at the time blue LEDs were not a thing and having established that it was indeed a blue LED and not some sort of a filter he asked the man who built the bike where on Earth he’d got it from. His answer “I can’t tell you how I got it, but it absolutely definitely did not come from the cockpit of a Tornado [RAF fighter jet].”

I guess the military got hold of them before they hit the consumer market.

8

I had read about the history of the blue LED before, but the video was well worth watching. Nichia’s poor treatment of Nakamura after he (probably) saved the company and literally made them billions really annoys me.

9

Like I said earlier:

Never trust your company.