LED Lighting History (1) - Knowing the past may help you in your future

Knowing the history will always help people to foresee future more clearly. But, usually history is boring and can not draw most of people’s attention. It is hard to illustrate the story clearly and interesting. This is what we try to do in this series of articles. So, what electrical contractors really need to know about the history and development of LED Lamps in dealing with their customers?

“LED" is often used in casual conversation, and most people think they know what these initials stand for. Actually, most people don’t.

Remember the adage that if somebody asks you what time it is, you shouldn’t tell him how to build a watch. So let’s try to keep it simple.

LED stands for light-emitting diode and refers to a solid-state semiconductor electronic component that gives out various levels and colors of light. LED downlight is typical LED Lighting application.

LEDs have been around for a little more than a century, but not the LED tubes. Most historians agree that the first device was crafted in 1907 by Captain H. J. Round, a British radio technology pioneer and a personal assistant to Guglielmo Marconi, who conducted the first transatlantic radio wireless transmission.

In the lab, Round stumbled across electroluminescence, an optical and electrical phenomenon in which a material produces light in response to the passage of electric current or to a strong electric field. After the discovery, he experimented with the first generation of LED devices.

Round continued research into early illumination and communications technology throughout his life, and he holds 117 patents.

However, no one knew exactly what to do with these LEDs. Fast-forward to 1962, where the story takes on an “only in America” spin, and these esoteric LED devices finally get upgraded to practical usefulness.

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