The LED fulfils 50 years

50 years ago, Nick Holonyak invented the first LED with practical application. His colleagues of GE (General Electric) referred to this LED like “the magic” because his light, unlike the infrared lasers, was visible for the human eye.

Holonyak Explains, in one interview with GE Lighting, that the competition promoted him to realise the discovery in the laboratory of GE. “If they could do a laser, I could do a better laser because it had achieved some halógenos inside the visible spectrum of the red. I could see which would be the future evolution and they were agrounded in the infrared”.

When Holonyak went in to form part of the team of investigation of GE, in 1957, the scientists and engineers of GE already were investigating in applications with semiconductors and building the antecedents of the modern diodes. While Robert Hall was working to achieve a semiconductor infrared laser and used polishes to form mirrors laser, Holonyak tried it inside the visible spectrum and forming compound mirrors. On 9 October 1962, and having by witnesses to the colleagues of GE, Holonyak was the first person that manipulated a laser visible semiconductor to light the first LED visible.

In these fifty years, the LED robust and of long length are source of light in countless applications, from the most daily until the most critical missions. In the GE Lighting Institute know the multiple current applications of the LED: they are everywhere. They provide light to electronic devices and electrical signals, such like buttons of the elevators, signals of exit, mobile telephones and of tactile screen, televisions, tablets, big screens of video for sportive evento or microscopic surgical equipment. They are the system preferred in parkings, roads, decoration and general lighting.

The systems LED present a double advantage: they save power and the cost of maintenance is very low. It is thus that his application has generalised , no only for interiors, but also for outsides and even use to light big and small cities.

The LED are small sources of light or thin chips that light with the movement of electrons through a material semiconductor. At present the LED are available in multiple colours, including the brilliant white that are accustomed to see home. They are very efficient place that use the 75 percent less power that the sources incandescentes and his length is a 25 percent longer. They are cold to the touch, light to the moment and his compact structure allows to design lamps smaller and light zones reduced.

The origins of General Electric trace back to the invention of the first light bulb incandescente. A century afterwards, GE Lighting follows lighting the world, with the development of new technologies like the fluorescence or the LED, that work of way more efficient, with less cost and with an environingingmental impact much more reduced.

GE Lighting Is part of the division Appliances & Lighting, that extends to global level like referent of the industry in appliances, lighting, systems and services for commercial use, industrial and residential. The innovation in technology and the initiative of the company ecomagination allows to GE Appliances & Lighting offer to the market products and solutions that help to the customers to fulfil with the exigencias environingingmental current.