LED LIGHTING HISTORY

WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Light Emitting Diode (LED), or Solid Stage Lighting (SSL), was invented in the 1920’s, but no practical uses could be found.  Then in 1961 the first serious work began on industrializing this technology here in the United States, at Texas Instruments and General Electric.  However, with costs of $200 per unit, practical use remained years away.  Since this time, the Monsanto Corporation did start mass production of very basic first generation LED light units in 1968– mostly for Hewlett Packard handheld calculators.

The 1970s brought major breakthroughs at Fairchild Optoelectronic, when compound semiconductor chips were integrated in a planar process at Fairchild Semiconductor. This process, which continues today, drops the cost to 5 cents per unit, and LED Lighting development for commercial use started in earnest.

Early LEDs were low intensity and red in color.  Today, LEDs cover the visible spectrum from 2700 degree Kelvin to 4,100 degree Kelvin.  So, with costs manageable and color spectrum unlimited, mass production of light fixture assemblies (in recessed, cove, step, under counter, and general work light fixtures) is underway.  Although I could not say they’ve overtaken conventional fluorescent lighting systems yet, it is in my opinion that it is the future of the electrical lighting industry and it is coming faster than people realize.

We’ll explore more in the next articles.

Historical LED Time Line:

• 1907    Discovery of electroluminescent – H.T. Round – Marconi Labs – England (#415).

• 1927    Creation of 1st LED – Oleg Vladimirovich Losev – Russia (#6,7)

• 1955    Infrared Emission from gallium arsenide (GaAs) identified – Rubin Braunstein – RCA – USA (#10)

• 1961    Electrical current applied to GaAs, emitted infrared radiation – Robert Baird and Gary Pittman – Texas Instruments – USA (#11)

• 1962    1st practical visible-spectrum (red) LED developed – Niock Holonyak Jr. (Father of the Light Emitted Diode) – (#12)

• 1968    1st mass production of LEDs, using Gallium Arsenide Phosphide (indicator lights) – Monsanto Corporation – USA – (#16)

• 1968    Integrated Monsanto’s LEDs into handheld calculators – Hewlett Packard – USA

• 1970    Compound Semiconductor chips fabricated with planar process – Dr. Jean Hoerni – Fairchild Semiconductor – (#17)

• 1971    1st blue LED – Jacques Pankove (inventor of Gallium Nitride LED) – RCA – USA

• 1972    1st yellow, orange and brighter red, LEDs are invented – M. George Craford – USA – (#14)

• 1976    1st high-brightness, high efficiency LEDs for optical fiber telecommunication – T.P. Pearsall – USA – (#15)

• 1978     Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) invented – Dr. Ching Tang – Eastman Kodak – USA

• 1993     1st High-brightness blue LED, which led to white LEDs – Shuji Nakamura – Nichia Corporation – Japan – (#23)

• 2008    300 lumens of visible light per watt luminous efficiency, was achieved by using nanocrystals.

• 2009    Growing Gallium Nitride LEDs on silicon was achieved

The development of LEDs has, and continues to, double in scope every 36 months since 1961.