Have you ever wondered ….

Where did LED lighting come from? Who invented LED lighting?

 

Let me give you a brief history of LED lighting.

 

Led lighting got its start over a hundred years ago when an Englishman Henry Joseph Round discovered that applying an electric current to silicon carbide can produce light. He published his findings in 1907 in the trade journal “Electrical World”.

 

He lost interest in developing his research as he went on to work on direction finding equipment for the marine industry.

 

Starting in 1921 the Russian physicist Oleg Lossew confirmed this effect and continued such research detailing the results in detail from 1927 to 1942. A French physicist Georges Destriau continued this research using zinc sulfide as the light source.

 

Georges Destriau, today, is considered the father of electroluminescence.

 

With the invention of the transistor in 1951 physicist could now explain light emission.

 

In 1955 the infrared transmission from semiconductors GaAs, GaSb and InP was reported by Rubin Brunstein.

 

Jointly shared by Robert Biard and Gary Pittman was the production the first infrared LED. They received a patent for light that was beyond the spectrum of light visible to the human eye. (1961)

 

The following year, 1962, saw the first Led to emit visible red light. This was American Nick Holonyak producing the first industrially produced LED.

 

Two years later, IBM was using red LEDs on their computer circuit boards.

In 1968, Hewlett Packard was using LEDs in their handheld calculators. Monsanto was mass producing LEDs using GaAsP.

New semiconductor materials were developed over the next few years. In 1971 LEDs are produced in green, orange and yellow. Research continues to improve the performance of LEDs.

1976 saw Thomas P. Pearsall using LEDs for fiber optic telecommunications.

The 1980’s started the rush to develop this technology using Gallium Aluminum Arsenide .

Shuki Nakamura introduced high bright blue LEDs using InGaN in 1963. This was in the green light spectrum. He would later go on to develop white LEDs (1995).

1996 a patent was filed by Shimizy for producing a white light source based on blue, red, and green LED.

This is the now common RGB LED.

 

2002 saw commercially available white LEDs.

2007 sees the U.S. pledging to replace incandescent bulbs with LEDs.

 

2010 standards for LEDs are published by the DLC (Design Lights Consortium)

 

2014 Audi starts using LED technology in their headlights.

 

Today research continues to improve the efficacy of LEDs and looking for new technologies to improve LEDS, such as organic LEDs (OLED).

 

Some of the developments to watch for include:

 

Flexible LEDs to be used in LED displays

Dynamic beam spreads without moving parts

Driverless LEDs that utilize the LEDs themselves to generate their power requirements;\

LED Wi-Fi

Automatic glare reducing headlights using LED technology.