How Blue LEDs Were Invented - LGR Tech Tales

The blue LED. Ubiquitous as they are now, they’re a relatively recent invention! Yet without them so much of our modern tech wouldn’t be possible, from cell phone displays, to energy-efficient light bulbs. Join me in LGR Tech Tales, looking at stories of technological inspiration, failure, and everything in-between!

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● Music used in order of appearance:
"Nautical 2" by Loscil

"Anekbah Theme"

Downtown Alley 1, Particle Emission 2, Smooth Deal

"Twin Shine"

● Sources for this episode's info:

[JohnDuthie]

SHOUT OUT LGR FOR THE BLUE LED STORY 6 YEARS AHEAD OF VERITASIUM

[marco_evertus]

I love tech tales. It's so informative and well produced that I forget I am on youtube.

[TheJadeknight]

I had no idea it took so much effort to create them. That was fascinating.

[vwestlife]

It took 86 years to make a blue LED bright enough to be usable. Now I curse them for being _too_ bright. Do we really need power indicator LEDs that are bright enough to light up your whole room at night?

[snorman]

As a kid I remember reading about how hard it was to get blue LEDs to work. I was into electronics and at the time only red yellow and green LEDs were available. I wanted blue so bad. My how times have changed

[WarthogRacer]

Ah, blue LEDs and Silver painted plastic, which pretty much sums up computers in the early '00s.

[AnvilSP]

I never knew I would be so interested in a 10 minute video about blue LEDs.

[metfanl]

Entertaining *and* informative, that's why I keep coming back to LGR!

[Gexzumi]

I shall always remember the first time I ever saw a blue LED. It was the early 90's, and the children's museum had this diorama of the city with various color LEDs all around it which would periodically light up to demonstrate how the power grid worked. I had always been obsessed with LEDs, and of course had only seen the red green and yellow LEDs (you know, the LEDs they sold at Radio Shack), but when some of the LEDs lit up blue, my mind was blown.

[travosk]

The notifications LED me to this video.

[Xilefian]

I love this story. Already knew about it from prior interests, but it's great to finally have a really nicely made video about it to share around.

It's hard to describe how important blue LEDs are for technology, probably because they suddenly exploded to be everywhere thanks to the efforts of all the researchers involved to make them so affordable.

[Ralph-yngr]

I never expected something so simple to be so important, such a challenge to create, or particularly a topic if an LGR video. Thank you for illuminating me from my ignorance. :)

[chrisrobinson]

a fantastic tech tales episode. Clearly a great deal of research went into this and the final result is fantastic. Thanks again for giving such brilliant technological insights!

[huhabab]

A bit late to the game... but I just wanted to say how much enjoy watching the development of LGR over the years. The Tech Tales series always was researched well and informative, if you were an retro-geek or not. But I think this video really expanded the target audience, which I think is fantastic!

[predcon]

Now this is interesting! I had always thought that LEDs were _all_ white light, and the color depended on what you dyed the plastics they're encapsulated in. I didn't know the diodes themselves provided the color.

[jimsutton]

Great video detailing the people who struggled with this technical challenge and the details that came together to make it reality. Grateful that there are people who ask questions like "what if"!

[kev]

Wow this was incredibly well researched. Don't hear too much about thermal annealing on youtube but I like it.

[volvo]

Great tech tale! When I was a kid I used to go to a local electronics parts store (not a radio shack) with my dad so he could get parts and schematics to repair TV's and VCR's, i'd always venture off on my own and look at random parts. One year I went in and was in amazement that there were a few dim blue led's added to their led display board. I begged my dad to buy me one and think I had to hold back crying and utter dissapointment because he didn't want to spend the equivelant of probably $10 today on a single blue LED for me to stick across a battery and quickly break by using it improperly :)

[djake]

I remember when the Radio Shack catalog listed Blue for the first time. So cool!

[joshuaevans]

Consumer LEDs are what give me hope for the future. We did the impossible - made a commercially viable light source that produces essentially no waste heat, and will (essentially) never burn out

Imagine telling that to Edison a hundred years ago? Makes you wonder what we consider "impossible" today that will become commonplace tomorrow