The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.
Really annoying that the company shat on him for years, and continued to do so after he multiplied the value of the company. Toxic behavior.
Didn’t fire him though. I don’t think my boss would let me sit in an office doing my own project and binning notes from him for 20 years.
I bet he was ok with : Nobel prize bitch!
That’s Japan, baybee. They love their toxic work culture. Thankfully, it is slowly changing with the younger generations, however.
The blue led was released in 1993. I remember reading an article in Wired magazine (back when magazines were published on paper) about the invention. Gladly, the article is still available online: https://www.wired.com/1995/03/blue-laser/
I talked with some friends about the “true boo-roo” led, and the phrase stuck with us (that’s why I still remember the article). At the time (almost 30 years ago) we had no idea how important the invention was, even when we realized that it allowed for rgb led light.
But we had no idea leds would be miniaturized to be used in screens and be as ubiquitous as they are today. Living through all this technology evolution has been quite the ride.
Wow, thank you for sharing that.
Excellent counter example to anyone claiming that we need patent and copyright to innovate.
This man made nothing on his invention and was not motivated by money but fame.
There are endless of examples of how those who do things for money hold back the creativity that leads to innovation. This is one of them. It almost didn’t happen because his pursuit was not seen as profitable.
This man made nothing on his invention and was not motivated by money but fame.
And then he sued the company for $20 million because the CEO didn’t want to respect his efforts and stiffed him.
And the amount he actually won only covered the legal fees, so he made nothing.
And if he had been granted a patent for his invention, he would have been fairly compensated for his work by being able to license production to companies that had the means to make them at scale. OP seems to think this scenario is an example of how patents should be abolished, but it’s a perfect example of why we have them in the first place. And that reason is so that rich people don’t fuck over comparatively poor inventors.
Your cognitive dissonance is why we cannot improve this system. Patents cannot both be responsible for his lack of profit from his invention and how he would have been fairly compensated.
Patents do exists and we was not fairly compensated, therefore patent do not solve their intended problem.
We live in this reality. Not whatever rose colored version you think could exist if we just get the correct tweaks in place.
At some point we need to stop trying to adapt the concepts people came up with hundreds of years ago. Created in a world that no longer resembles our own.
Consider how contentious the issue was that they redefined to included it in the constitution. The consider what other contentious issues were also included in that same document, i.e. the three fifths compromise.
Parents do exists
Phew, was scared there for a second.
My favorite thing about widely-available blue LEDs was the effect on TV scifi.
Watch the Star Trek shows made in the 1980s and 1990s and the tricorders, alien gadgets, and other props were always twinkling with red, yellow, and green LEDs to look futuristic. A generation later and every single hand prop on 2000s Doctor Who, Torchwood, etc. glowed and twinkled blue because the LEDs had just become cheap enough for prop makers, but weren’t yet widespread in day-to-day life so the viewers were seeing something strange and unusual.
Now every color of LED imaginable is just common and whatever, but for a good stretch of time glowy blue became the standard “scifi” color just because that particular tech happened to turn up at that particular time.
9’s sonic screwdriver
I’m not sure that LEDs were the thing that kicked off the trend. They made it easier to implement, but even in the 80s and 90s, you had things like Tron that might have kicked off the futuristic look with neon lines/tubes.
This was an yet another glorious episode from veritasium.
I hope we get well past UVC LEDs. (i.e., shorter wavelengths) UV LEDs are already available. Unfortunately, this progress will stop before X-ray light. With +1 KeV energy, you pretty much must blast off the electrons from the atoms to emit X-rays, which an x-ray tube already does. Or by peeling off a piece of scotch tape.
Maybe making X-ray emitters cheap enough to put in a flashlight isn’t the best idea anyway.
Maybe not in a flashlight, but the scientific industry would be very pleased with them. Sterilize water and all surfaces in a second? Flash with 200nm light.
Handheld battery powered X-ray devices exist and are widely available. I used to work with those. In Germany you need a permit to operate them. https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/de/en/XL2
How about cheap enough to put in a fleshlight?
If you have a bone in your penis, you may not be fully human.
Otherwise, don’t x-ray your penis.
X-rays use invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of internal tissues, bones, and organs on film or digital media.
Good advice, but I put a Kleenex in my urethra for safekeeping and I’d love to track it down to get it out again.
/c/flashlight sends its regards
Sorry sir I have no idea what you are talking about
Making blue LEDs is easy. Just make a red one, then move towards it really fast.
Haven’t watch the video yet, but I remember how impressed my step dad was with the blue LED when we got our PlayStation 2. I was like, yeah great whatever let’s play games, at the time.
That was an excellent watch, thanks for sharing.
YouTube is horrendous for ads though.
Revanced
I aint downloading a two year old microg gmscore apk 💀
You thinking of Vanced? Revanced is updated pretty regularly
No when I patch youtube, it wants me to download this 2 year old gmscore build:
Ah gotcha
Samsung (etc) caught with their pants down
It makes you wonder how much longer it would take to commercialize blue LEDs without his contributions.
I took a blue sharpie on my white LED - voilà
If it was so hard to make the first one that hundreds of researchers couldn’t do it for years… then how is it so cheap and easy to do today?
