[HN Gopher] Isamu Akasaki, inventor of first efficient blue LED,...
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Isamu Akasaki, inventor of first efficient blue LED, has died
Author : _Microft
Score : 395 points
Date : 2021-04-02 18:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.japantimes.co.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.japantimes.co.jp)
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| "I gotta get me a blue LED or something because that blue light
| ... is bad ass."
|
| https://www.theunticket.com/audio/drops/mattmcconbluelight.m...
| cush wrote:
| So he's who I can blame! Just kidding, but in reality I do cover
| up any and every blue LED that comes in my house. No thank you
| every electronics manufacturer in existence!
| oblio wrote:
| Well, if you look a bit past the immediate effect of having
| blue LEDs, I doubt you cover any and every LCD screen/touch
| screen that comes into your house. Since you know, those use
| LEDs (including blue ones) as backlighting :-D
|
| Similar story for LED lamps, I'm reasonably sure those are
| derived from blue LEDs.
| cush wrote:
| Where would we we in a world without Zinc!?
|
| _wakes up in a cold sweat_
|
| Noooo come back zinc!
| [deleted]
| person_of_color wrote:
| This makes me want to work on fundamental technology that will
| change the world.
| discordance wrote:
| Would be interesting to see how many deaths are attributed to
| 'pneumonia' of late in Japan.
| ur-whale wrote:
| IIRC, the company he worked for when he discovered / invented the
| blue LED was - shall we say - not particularly inclined to give
| him his dues.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| I believe you might be thinking about Shuji Nakamura (and his
| then-employer Nichia), one of the other two who shared the
| prize. Akasaki and Amano were mostly associated with Nagoya
| University, and Akasaki later with Meijo.
| ur-whale wrote:
| You are correct, didn't recall correctly.
| amelius wrote:
| Well, do inventors at Apple ever get any recognition? I only
| hear about their product designer Jony Ive.
| bumbada wrote:
| Usually Apple does not invent anything, they design using
| what other people have invented.
|
| Apple does not focus on research as much as in development.
| They put billions into factories that mass produce what has
| been already proven to work.
|
| Multi touch for example was not invented by Apple, Apple
| bought a company that invented most of the technology and
| brought it into telephones.
|
| They did not invented Gorilla glass or accelerometers or
| small hard drives(like in the old ipod). They approached
| inventors and offered using their technologies in the
| millions or tens of millions of units.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I would assume that dues are about money, not recognition.
| amelius wrote:
| Most likely, but they are very related and I was thinking
| about both.
| mjhagen wrote:
| They used to, with the original Macintosh.
| astrange wrote:
| You can find their names on their patents or on their
| Linkedins.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Japan, in general, does not like to highlight individuals;
| instead, focusing on the team.
|
| My boss wrote a book about color management, featuring the
| devices we made, and they made him remove his name. He did 100%
| of the work.
| asiachick wrote:
| It's true. But still there are plenty of examples of people
| in Japan taking credit vs the company. Hideo Kojima, Tetsuya
| Mizuguchi, Yu Suzuki, to name a few.
|
| Also, they take all the credit even though they also had
| teams, often who did all the real creative work.
|
| They also rarely share the rewards. Yu Suzuki had 6 expensive
| sports cars (Ferrari, etc...) while his teams worked 80hr
| weeks and got paid $30k-$40k salaries.
| slow_kindjal wrote:
| You are talking about Shuji Nakamura.
| biscuit1 wrote:
| Anecdotally, Nakamura seems to get most of the credit in
| American academia
| fireattack wrote:
| Probably because he's in American academia?
| 1-6 wrote:
| I remember when upgrading Nokia 3310's to Blue LEDs was a thing
| in Chinatown. People's phones glowed like something out of the
| world back then.
| _Microft wrote:
| The effect that some people's work eventually has on everyone's
| life can be just amazing.
|
| In this case it enabled LED lighting for everyone. Transistors
| (Bardeen, Shockley), lasers or artificial fertilizer (Haber,
| Bosch) also come into mind.
| kragen wrote:
| Agreed. Also, Norman Borlaug (the Green Revolution which
| prevented, or at least postponed, the famine we'd have been
| living in for 40 years now, thus saving a billion lives) and
| Stanislav Petrov (who refused to raise the alarm in 01983 that
| would have started a global thermonuclear war, thus saving
| three billion lives).
| mhh__ wrote:
| Peter Mansfield also comes to mind (MRI).
| dehrmann wrote:
| Blue LEDs have enabled incredible power savings by making LEDs
| viable for lighting rooms and screens.
| s0rce wrote:
| The Hall-Heroult process for electrolytic aluminum refining is
| pretty impactful. Many polymer synthesis processes are also
| very impactful day to day, starting with Bakelite (less
| relevant now).
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| A more important question is, how well were they compensated?
| Most of the value are not captured by the original inventors.
| netrus wrote:
| To be fair, to a certain degree that's part of the deal in
| academia. Tenure is like an reverse insurance, everyone gets
| a salary, even if only few will be able to make significant
| contributions. And that's okay, because a lot of luck is
| involved in individual success in academia.
| neolog wrote:
| What do you mean by original inventor?
| outworlder wrote:
| Company's gross went from 200 million USD to 800 million USD.
|
| He got $180.
|
| After a lawsuit, they settled for around 8 million.
|
| Got a Nobel prize too.
| dls2016 wrote:
| Regarding the lawsuit, I believe you're thinking of
| Nakamura.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura
| sneak wrote:
| Similar story around AIDS-denier Kary Mullis, who invented
| PCR. I think his employer sold the patent for >$1B. 1993
| Nobel in chemistry.
|
| I remember reading about him in Omni magazine.
| samatman wrote:
| My personal favorite here is John B. Goodenough for lithium-ion
| battery chemistry.
|
| What an amazing name!
| oblio wrote:
| Also for major contributions to the development of RAM.
|
| Not bad. Or shall we say, good enough?
| amelius wrote:
| 640K ought to be good enough
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Dang covid has killed a lot of brilliant humans. So many
| obituaries here are from covid
| 1-6 wrote:
| Please read carefully and comment after. He passed away from
| Pneumonia. There is no mention of COVID anywhere in this
| article or online.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I think my first blue LED was in the power button of the
| Playstation 2. Something that made it seem exceptionally
| futuristic at the time.
| handol wrote:
| Then came the fad of the bright blue, "plugged in but turned
| off" indicator on consumer electronics that had to be taped
| over if you wanted to sleep in the same room as the device.
| JonathonW wrote:
| The PS2 got it right-- its power button was a red/green
| bicolor LED (red on standby; green when powered on).
|
| The blue LED was on the eject button, and was only lit while
| the console was powered on (and a disc was loaded, IIRC).
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| This fad has unfortunately not fully died yet!
| oblio wrote:
| Agreed. One of my monitors can attest to that. Black duct
| tape, to match the monitor design :-))
| raimondious wrote:
| Yes! One of my first hobby electronics projects as a kid was
| adding a blue LED to an RC car just for the cool factor.
| mjhagen wrote:
| My Sony amp from '99 had one which they actually enhanced with
| some acrylic to make it appear even larger. Yes I bought it
| specifically because it had that blue LED.
| Goog_l_Dude_l wrote:
| For anyone wondering (like I was): Why A Blue LED Is Worth A
| Nobel Prize (2014) https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/why-
| blue-led-worth...
| junon wrote:
| I remember when I saw my first blue LED. It immediately felt like
| I was in the future, and I remember how bright it was lighting up
| the entire room in the dark.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I remember in ~2000, I went with my wife to buy some LEDs. The
| price of red, orange, yellow and green was $0.1 each, so we
| bought 10 of each.
|
| We were very surprised that they also had blue LEDs, so we asked
| the price and it was $2 each. After some deliberation we only
| bought only 2 of them.
|
| I'm still surprised when I see a cheap toy or device with a blue
| or white LED.
| hathawsh wrote:
| I agree, fond memories. Today you can get all the popular
| colors for less than a penny each.
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32848810276.html
| koreanguy wrote:
| "had been recognized for the invention which has contributed to
| bright and energy-saving white light sources,"
|
| contributing and inventing are two different things
|
| the real info
|
| Oct. 9, 1962: First Visible LED Is Demonstrated Nick Holonyak,
| Jr. demonstrates the world's first light-emitting diode (LED) to
| General Electric suits,
| kbelder wrote:
| Just as important, or even more-so, this allowed efficient
| controllable multicolor and white LED lights, since we already
| had red and green LEDs.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It allowed white LEDs in another, more important, way.
|
| There was a quantum leap required to go from Green to Blue.
| That same technical insight led to UV leds, which means
| florescent white light LEDs in various temperatures.
| mark-r wrote:
| I always have trouble with the official story of the blue LED,
| because I had a 1985 Volkswagen Golf that had a blue LED for the
| high-beam indicator. It might not have been as bright as today's
| blue LEDs, but it was bright enough to be useful.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| How do you know it was an led?
| toast0 wrote:
| Could have been electroflorescent, like the timex backlights?
| edoceo wrote:
| Oh, I remember when blue LEDs became readily available (late 90s
| for me) and I would mod all my stuff to blue.
|
| Had this MS ergo keyboard, with the LEDs in the middle hump, came
| with green. So, I replaced with these 2.5 hi-blues and I was
| blinded by my own Numlock-Beam. Had to cross a resistor over
| there to take the edge off.
|
| Anyway, I think HN should get a black-bar because the blue LED is
| so cool.
| m_mueller wrote:
| Worst one for me is on an older pair of Sony's flagship NC
| headphones. Putting them on at night is like flying a plane
| with landing lights on, and of course it shines right in the
| face of my partner.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I found myself taping over some blue LEDs because they were so
| bright at night!
| bawolff wrote:
| Allegedly blue LEDs are supposed to be really disruptive to
| sleep (not just due to brightness but due to wavelength. Body
| interprets blue as daylight and red dusk or something)
| httpsterio wrote:
| Well, you're right sort off. Blue light is related to the
| production of melatonin, which is used regulate our sleep
| cycle.
|
| Blue light (aka shorter waveforms) blocks the melatonin
| production, most likely a genetic factor as the blue
| wavelength is related to the sun's day cycle.
| samstave wrote:
| So as to keep one more alert during daylight hours, and
| ready to exert energy?
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| It's long, but if you're into it this podcast (episodes
| 2-5) go into some lengthy research and discussion into
| it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPNW_gerXa4NjS
| NbZhpSD...
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Yes, it's why SAD therapy lights are blue-ish.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I actually bought a little sheet of circle neutral density
| filters sticker things to cover a ton of these LEDs in my
| world.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Still do this all the time
| randrews wrote:
| I have a laptop charger with one that I taped over with
| kapton tape: the orange kapton is almost the exact opposite
| of the blue LED so you're left with a dim white indicator, no
| blinding brightness.
| boomlinde wrote:
| I hate them with a passion for this reason but on second
| thought maybe I can't really blame it on the LEDs themselves.
| People seem to give them too much forward voltage and don't
| always use diffusing packaging, which would have made them
| much more pleasant to look at.
|
| Then again, I rarely see such problems with products with red
| or amber LEDs.
|
| I have a synthesizer with blue LEDs that's particularly
| obnoxious. It's probably feeding them 5V and there's of
| course no diffusion at all. I've taped all of them over with
| a layer of duck tape and they're still too bright.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Yeah, I feel sorry for this man's family and loved ones, but
| I wish he'd never invented the damn things. Blue light
| scatters in air more than non-blue, and it's just garish to
| look at.
| jeffwass wrote:
| You wouldn't have white LED lighting or any of the mixed
| colours that include blue (eg cyan or purple) without his
| contribution.
|
| Don't blame the inventor for the bad applications of
| companies. Just like you wouldn't blame Alexander Graham
| Bell for telemarketer spam.
| astrange wrote:
| I used to have the all transparent plastic Harmon Cardon
| speakers (iSub?) but I had to get rid of it because the power
| lights were so bright. And since it was transparent you
| couldn't cover them up.
| gertlex wrote:
| I did the same thing to my Dell laptop in college when purple
| LEDs first became available. And a year or so prior to that
| (when my google results were still fruitless), I swapped blue
| LEDs in like you, and got a purple-ish result by putting some
| pink paper between the LED and the numlock icon (or whichever
| it was). I was fascinated to find that the paper faded to white
| after a few weeks as a result.
|
| These days I like yellow, but am lazy and just put kapton tape
| over the white LEDs on my desktop...
| baybal2 wrote:
| Panasonic initially picked a teal LED for its notebook
| because it was really, really expensive back in nineties. Few
| percents of the laptop cost was that single power LED.
|
| The legend is that they secured an exclusivity agreement with
| Nichia for that colour for some years, but the reality is
| much likelly be it just being expensive, and hard to source.
| sjwright wrote:
| A joke I first saw on Twitter: LED status key
| Green - online Red - error Amber - busy Blue
| - modern
|
| (Source:
| https://twitter.com/deviantollam/status/1345143016307113985 )
| mrweasel wrote:
| Blue = Bluetooth.
|
| At this point a blue LED is a little early 2000 electronics.
| Black101 wrote:
| This is the error I get when clicking that Twitter link:
| https://i.imgur.com/B4ackBV.png..............I_HATE_TWITTER/...
|
| Reloading the page fixes it.. I've had this issue for probably
| about a year with Twitter.
| ericj5 wrote:
| Do blue LEDs on home electronics bother anyone else at night time
| as much as it does me? They appear so much brighter to me than
| other colors
| Bishop_ wrote:
| Yes, I was getting annoyed by an access point I bought that had
| blue status lights but amazingly it has a setting that turns
| them off either always or during specified hours. I'm floored
| that every device doesn't allow you to disable them.
| sneak wrote:
| Overbright indicators of any kind on electronics bother me. The
| brightest are indeed usually blue, but green and red are also
| offenders.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Do blue LEDs on home electronics bother anyone else at night
| time as much as it does me?
|
| Don't have home electronics in your bedroom is my advice.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Having grown up in a small house and spent quite a lot of
| time in a friends house which is a lot bigger (I'm still
| young, so this was very much post video games for example), I
| think the mental separation of having multiple rooms in a
| house (rather than everything being done in my bedroom) is
| probably worth another 5 or 10 percent on exams for me at
| least. The idea of having a "games room" for example is
| utterly unthinkable to me still, for example.
| kgermino wrote:
| Easier said than done unfortunately.
|
| For example: it's hard to get through summer without a fan or
| air conditioner in your bedroom by me. A surprising number of
| those come with always on lights and it's not always clear
| until you plug them in.
|
| Beyond that there's just "not everyone has the luxury of a
| single purpose room." Especially now, lots of people need to
| setup their home office in their bedroom. I have a vacuum
| with an always on indicator light, and the only good place to
| put it is a bedroom. Some people have studios and their
| entire apartment is their "bedroom."
|
| All in: you're right, it's best to keep your electronics out
| of the bedroom, but that's not always practical and way to
| many things have unnecessary status lights.
| Cerium wrote:
| I just black tape everything in my bedroom. I don't need to
| see a light to know the fan is on.
| shoo wrote:
| I have an electric kettle that holds water in a vessel with
| transparent sides. When the kettle is turned on and heating
| water it illuminates the water with blue LEDs.
|
| It doesn't bother me at night time as the light goes on only
| when it is in use. But the fact that it has lights at all is
| bothering.
| projektfu wrote:
| A deaf person wouldn't be able to hear the kettle going
| through its phases.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Disability-first design has a way of blending in for people
| who aren't yet disabled.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| That's the feature that sold me on electric kettles!
| Tade0 wrote:
| My kettle's thermostat only releases the power switch, but
| doesn't actually cut the power, so if something is blocking
| the switch from going to the "off"(up) position - like a
| large plate or something similar - it boils off all the water
| and then starts burning itself.
|
| Happen once and I only noticed because the light was on and I
| couldn't hear the water boiling because it wasn't there
| anymore.
| ericj5 wrote:
| Haha! I have this one too. I've always wondered, wouldn't red
| represent the fact it's being heated better? Anyway, I have
| to admit it looks cool unfortunately
| cush wrote:
| Yes! I cover them all up with electrical tape or LightDims
| MrDOS wrote:
| I remember a Digikey catalogue c.2002? where it seemed like
| blue LEDs were the star of the show. Page after page of this
| new wonder. And then the following decade-long flood of blue-
| LED-festooned consumer products, where every new bit of kit
| needed to visually proclaim how new-fangled it was by blasting
| out that particularly shrill wavelength of visible light.
|
| So cool, but so annoying.
| grawprog wrote:
| I've got a laptop charger with a blue led. It's awful, I have
| to remember to unplug it at night, even in the other room. I've
| forgotten before and woke up to use the washroom only to find
| the whole living room lit up from the little led and I'd feel
| instantly wide awake.
|
| Contrast that with a USB charger I picked up in an emergency,
| unaware it had a red led that was on constantly as long as the
| cord was receiving power, fucking terrible design and I've
| thankfully replaced it, but it didn't bother me too badly when
| I had to use it in my room at night. I could still sleep and
| everything.
| dorkwood wrote:
| There has to be another way of showing an appliance is
| receiving power which is both visible at night and in broad
| daylight. The super-bright LED is overkill in anything but the
| brightest lighting scenario, and makes any room immediately
| ugly and unpleasant after 6pm.
| s0rce wrote:
| Yes, I have LightDims (https://www.lightdims.com/) on nearly
| everything.
| glandium wrote:
| I have a hard drive enclosure in the bedroom that was too
| bright to my taste. So much so that I opened it to remove it
| (which, incidentally, was really easy, it was plugged in the
| board via a connector, I didn't even need to cut wires or
| anything)
| jberryman wrote:
| I have a guitar pedal that uses blue and red LEDs to indicate
| mode. Part of my bedtime ritual is to stomp it to the red mode.
| mrweasel wrote:
| While blue LEDs are wonderful to have, I don't get why anyone
| would add them to a product as an indicator.
|
| They are annoying and typically insanely bright. Also, just
| because something has bluetooth, does mean that a blue LED is
| legally required.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| When Mr. Akasaki's invention started making waves, blue LEDs
| were still more expensive. So a blue LED was a signifier of
| quality. They became more affordable, so everyone started
| putting them everywhere. And made them bright so you would
| notice.
|
| Probably an analog is curving a 42" screen designed to be
| viewed on a couch across a living room.
| vidarh wrote:
| I have a drawer full of black electrical tape and small round
| dot stickers almost entirely due to blue leds. Though it's
| convenient on everything. The electrical tape blocks it out
| entirely, for the most part. The round stickers let through
| some light so is great for dimming it down a bit or just use
| multiple to block it completely.
|
| I think they're so widespread now largely because they were so
| expensive when they first started becoming common that they
| were used in expensive equipment, and became a way of making
| things look higher end.
| kube-system wrote:
| I've found that for many of them (particularly the smaller
| ones) I can color them in with a black pen in a way that dims
| them ~95%, that way they're not overbearing but I can still
| see whatever status they were trying to tell me.
|
| Ballpoints or other fine-tips tend to follow the shape of the
| recess and it does a pretty tidy job.
| grishka wrote:
| The one in my humidifier bothered me so much I opened the dang
| thing and was pleasantly surprised to find the LED on its own
| tiny board which I then disconnected.
| anorphirith wrote:
| I remember reading the article about blue LED's finally being
| invented, then about a year later I saw my city (Lyon) started
| using them downtown to light the street markers. I as impressed
| at the adoption speed
| boredpandas777 wrote:
| I remember back in 1990 there were no efficient blue LEDs. We
| were desperately looking for a solid state blue light source to
| get some chemical to fluoresce and the source had to be small and
| efficient. The initial SiC diodes which I think came out in
| 1992-1994 were not powerful enough. Huge progress has been made
| since then.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I distinctively remember buying my first blue LED in what must
| have been the mid-90s. I simply walked into an electronic parts
| store and bought a single spare LED. I don't think I had ever
| seen a blue LED in action before, it was completely new to me, so
| I was very curious.
|
| It was of the very common standard shape and size LEDs were
| during that time, and its case was colorless but cloudy, not
| clear. A good thing, because that meant the LED would emit its
| light along the entire casing, not just straight forward, making
| it much easier to look at. It also wasn't much brighter than
| other LEDs, that came later.
|
| When I applied power and saw it shining in that beautiful blue
| color, I was positively amazed. This was so much cooler and so
| much more beautiful than the red, green, and yellow LEDs I had
| been using before. I distinctively remember just leaving it
| attached to power, sitting on my desk, just for something nice to
| look at.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| incidentally you can get leds with clear, clouded, or
| colored+clouded encasings. Only with the latter can you tell
| what color they are when they're off.
|
| One time I had some red leds in clear encasing in a parallel
| configuration and they inexplicably would not light up... it
| turned out one of the leds was actually infrared and it was
| invisibly on and sucking up all of the voltage
| jeffwass wrote:
| Very similar story here. I was in undergrad back then and
| worked in a part-time job with the high energy physics dept (we
| built front-end detector electronics for particle detectors at
| CERN, Fermilan, SNO, etc).
|
| One of the guys on our team had great relations with the major
| electronics distributors and always had well stocked lab. One
| day, mid 90's, we saw he got a sample of few of these brand new
| Blue LED's.
|
| My coworker and I snuck into his lab after he left and wired
| one of them up.
|
| It's hard to describe what it was like to see this bright deep
| blue compared to only the red, yellow, and green LED's that
| existed until that point. It was so cool to look at.
| uncledave wrote:
| I totally get that. I did exactly the same. Cost PS8 at the
| time if I remember as well which is a hell of a lot of money
| for an LED. It was just so different to the yellow, red and
| green ones. I was buying a bit of the future.
|
| But roll on to today and the things are mostly a nuisance In my
| life. I've got one shining at me off my monitor now. If I scoot
| myself up in my chair a bit it doesn't annoy me as much. I may
| stick some tape over it.
|
| Still, RIP Mr Akasaki. Your contribution to the world is a net
| good one. Without it we probably wouldn't have white leds :)
| nfriedly wrote:
| Yep, I have one computer with black electrical tape over the
| blue LEDs, and another where I added a resistor in between
| the motherboard and the light.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I remember there was a phase in the late 90s when all of the
| premium gear had blue LEDs. I remember a Cambridge Audio amp
| rack and CD player a flat mate had.
|
| Now of course they are used on all of the most tacky direct
| from China stuff.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > A good thing, because that meant the LED would emit its light
| along the entire casing, not just straight forward, making it
| much easier to look at.
|
| In a pinch, if you don't want your 5 or 7mm LEDs to be so
| focussed: carefully take a set of side-cutters and cut the tip
| off the LED.
| ashkankiani wrote:
| Could probably just use a lower grit sandpaper to rough up
| the tip.
| taneq wrote:
| At a past job we used LEDs for lighting for machine vision
| and that's precisely what we did to make them more diffuse.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Save that for lapping CPUs/GPUs and whip out the Dremel.
| stevebmark wrote:
| Now's a good time to read up on blue light, macular degeneration,
| blue blockers, and F.lux.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I remember reading the story of the development and breakthrough
| of the blue semiconductor laser in Scientific American (in
| print). Looked it up[0], it was Sept '97.
|
| Quite fascinating, it was a holy grail of sorts in that it would
| lead to higher resolution applications (Blu-ray) as well as round
| out the RGB to be able to make the range of visible colors. One
| thing I remember about the article was that it's hard to say
| 'blue' with a Japanese accent and it comes out 'true baroo'.
|
| Shortly after there were lots of expensive blue LEDs being added
| to lots of high-end items, including audiophile equipment that
| two of my family members made (separate brands: one tube, one
| solid-state).
|
| [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/true-blue/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| That article mentions blue laser. Is that the same as blue LED?
| karmakaze wrote:
| I'm no expert but I think they're closely related. There are
| gas lasers and semiconductor lasers. I think a semiconductor
| laser without any amplification/mirrors is essentially an
| LED. The blue LED used Gallium Nitride (GaN) which also used
| in blue lasers.
| sneak wrote:
| The purple made by mixing blue LEDs with red LEDs (it's a very
| distinct purple) is my favorite color (after black, of course).
|
| This man made it possible for LED purple to be everywhere.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Do you have an image of this? I am having a hard time imaging
| it..
| sneak wrote:
| I'm not sure if it doesn't photograph well or if modern
| displays aren't good at reproducing it, but I have never seen
| a photograph that does the color justice.
|
| Perhaps that's why I like it: it's novel when one is used to
| looking at screens all day.
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