Revolutionary is the operative word, even if exuberant, dazzling, nifty, cool also come to mind.. Imagine light in 16 million colors … fabric that can soak up the sun during the day and illuminate the third world at night. No plugs, no lightbulbs. All of this exists now, thanks to a tiny computer chip with a bright idea. It's called an LED, a light-emitting diode, and if it hasn't already begun to change everything you thought you knew about light, it will.
"Ten years ago, LEDs were kinds the trinkets," General Electric VP Michael Petras said. "It was keychain lights." These chips the size of a grain of salt that emits light were actually invented at GE in 1962, by a man named Nick Holanyak. In the beginning they only came in red and the applications were limited: traffic signals, brake lights, on-off switches. "So now it's into the big scoreboards at the stadiums or the concerts," Petras said. "We've got it in refrigeration cases at retail supermarkets. We have it in signs."
By the late 1990s, engineers had added green and blue, which meant they could create every color imaginable - and finally white. Suddenly there was an LED innovation explosion. Times Square is practically passé. This trailer from Video Roadshow is state-of-the-art for now, though Jeff Studley says in a couple of years it will be obsolete. "There'll be things we can't even imagine," he said. ...
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