The 50 year history of LED Technology: from zero to the world

Beijing on October 12th news, according to foreign media reports, more than 50 years ago to ge executives showed his invention, LED (light emitting diode) invented by Nick Austria Yake (Nick Holonyak) is that LED will replace incandescent bulbs. Although incandescent bulbs are still the mainstream of home lighting, but LED has changed the lighting applications in many ways. The LED has been accepted by the world, from the switch to the high brightness street lights in the streets of major cities.

Ubiquitous red LED

The first LED light is red. It's not for aesthetic reasons. LED is made by the way of setting up multilayer semiconductor chips on silicon wafer. As more and more semiconductor chip layers were added, people began to use various additives to determine the color of the LED lamp. The tiny silicon chip is immersed in the molten liquid, and then the metal contacts and wires are added. The first LED lamp uses a gallium arsenide solution to produce a natural red light from the LED lamp. Therefore, the default color of the LED lamp used as indicator is red.

The use of new technology to produce LED lights can also emit other colors of light, thus greatly expanding the scope of application of LED lamps. But in the first 10 years after the advent of the LED lamp, the light was red.

The first portable calculator

When the price of relatively cheap, low-power LED lights began to replace the incandescent bulbs in various electronic products, the prices of those electronic products also fell, down to a more acceptable level of consumer acceptance.

Busicom LE-120A is the world's first in the display using a LED luminous body portable calculator. Its display includes 7 separate LED lights. The portable calculator was listed in January 1971 for $400. As a result, before the Valentine's day of the year, the product has become a fashionable product that has been sought after by technical fans.

The first LED Watch

In 1972, there has been a century of watches and clocks technology has begun to accept the LED lamp. Pulsar launched the world's first LED watch in that year: Time Computer. It is said that the watch is very accurate, the annual operating error will not exceed 60 seconds. It is the first watch equipped with LED lights, but also with electronic timekeeping function, it was priced at $2100.

Unfortunately, the power consumption of this new technology is so high that people who wear this watch need to press a button to see the time.

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