I’d like to share a recent specific lighting development that found intuitive inspiration seventeen years ago with a lab discovery at Vanderbilt University in 2005.
At the very moment of this lab happenstance I sought to create lighting fixtures for the motion picture business knowing any modest success relative to this small entertainment industry would spill into the greater global lighting market and I would be the king of the mountain. And though my instincts were good and correct I’m still happy just to know how fricking smart or dumb I am.
Sure, had I played a better hand I’d be bored in the Bahamas listening to steel drums sipping drinks with umbrellas in them. I would have long ago offered to buy The SOH at any cost- Yes I like it that much to want to own it. LOL.
The lab discovery came, simply, from when a lab worker was asked by another co-lab worker to do a side favor and create a batch of small quantum dots. He was asked to make them even smaller after the first run, which he did. For shits and giggles he put some of the material in a glass cell and shined blue laser light at it. This brought about a startling discovery that these dots emitted beautiful white light.
Here’s a link to the article.
Well……………that was it! From that moment forward the LED Lighting Revolution took off in spades.
Now… what is sort of interesting and behind the scenes is that from white light development, Red, Green, Blue and its secondary colors, Magenta Yellow and Cyan also took off industry and globally wide in The LED Tape Medium.
Example of LED Tape that has in sequence RGBTD, (Red, Green, Blue, Tungsten and Daylight).
And here is an example of some RGB PIXEL LED Tape that illustrates how each separate Diode can be whatever color at whatever intensity you wish. And that means each Diode has all the separate colors within.
Let me explain…nope not enough time…let me sum up,
I thought I’d throw that in and give you all an intermission.
I’m not clear why it is yet IIRC it was the white light discovery that sparked the interest.
White light, (basically), is either of two tonal qualities. Indoor or outdoor.
Warm Indoor ‘Tungsten’ Color at approximately 3000 degrees Kelvin or outdoor or Bluish Daylight Color at 6000 degrees Kelvin. Generally speaking. These are the two colors in the visible spectrum we accept on skin tones. Essentially, we don’t accept color light on faces and so naturally we accept warm colors indoors to match candle light or incandescent light and outdoors we prefer the color of a combination of the sun and sky which tends to be bluer. In fact, the industry competes to provide white light which essentially means without color and especially without tints of green or magenta. OK…enough of the bla bla bla…
With the discovery of white emitting light via this quantum dot experiment the industry went wild!
There was so much time, energy and money spent to replace the incandescent , fluorescent and short and medium arc lights across the world that here we are seventeen years later and you might as well say goodbye to the past technologies. In fact, here in California, distributers will not resupply their shelves with incandescent light bulbs.
Incidentally, the newer house hold bulbs are pretty darn good and are dimmable.
The irony…or fantastic point from this all is that colored LED’s were around for a few decades yet there only significant application was primarily in signal lights in electronics. And it wasn’t until the discovery of white light, (at Vanderbilt), that the incredible and quite agreeable technical artistic application of Color LED Mixing found its fantastic place.
Thinking back, I wonder had someone begun developing The RGB color mixing for incident lighting of objects would a white light discovery or invention have come earlier? Additionally, the perfect mix of RGB in perfect balance creates white light so you could wonder why that usage did not take the lead.
Perhaps the complexity of power and control were factors as the diodes have different size resistors built into the tape…………so I can see that being a dissuader.
Simply, it just goes to show you how simple and quite boring having incredible and enormous technology sitting within our mist only needs a couple turns to the left and a couple more to the right in the agreeable fashion of sequences to include financing to spark fantastic ingenuity.
And how sweet it is to see it displayed without the urgency of say a war or a pandemic or stuff like that.
Oh! And how sweet it also is that you never have had to hear some political yahoos take credit for something that occurred quite pleasantly.
Here is a link to some of the leading lighting companies.
CREE now trades under the name of Wolfspeed, (WOLF).
Here is another list of LED Manufacturing Firms (CREE now WOLF not listed here)
A look at PHF and WOLF since 2005
I do not have my finger on the pulse of any companies that might be good as investment.
One thing to consider is how long LED Lights last. They simply do not burn out as quickly as incandescent. And they use so little power that the power companies can jack up their profits. LOL.
Here is a company I often use when I need to build a project and have the money saving time to allow for shipping. They are simply a good ‘go to’ company when you want to do your own build. Especially if you are building with tape.
Here is a good source for household LED replacement bulbs.
And the parent company of Green Creative is here.
I do not have a financial interest in any of these fine sources for your home or professional lighting interests.
All the best to Slope!
