[HN Gopher] Isamu Akasaki, inventor of first efficient blue LED,... ___________________________________________________________________ Isamu Akasaki, inventor of first efficient blue LED, has died Author : _Microft Score : 222 points Date : 2021-04-02 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.japantimes.co.jp) (TXT) w3m dump (www.japantimes.co.jp) | cush wrote: | So he's who I can blame! Just kidding, but in reality I do cover | up any and every blue LED that comes in my house. No thank you | every electronics manufacturer in existence! | oblio wrote: | Well, if you look a bit past the immediate effect of having | blue LEDs, I doubt you cover any and every LCD screen/touch | screen that comes into your house. Since you know, those use | LEDs (including blue ones) as backlighting :-D | | Similar story for LED lamps, I'm reasonably sure those are | derived from blue LEDs. | ur-whale wrote: | IIRC, the company he worked for when he discovered / invented the | blue LED was - shall we say - not particularly inclined to give | him his dues. | gimmeThaBeet wrote: | I believe you might be thinking about Shuji Nakamura (and his | then-employer Nichia), one of the other two who shared the | prize. Akasaki and Amano were mostly associated with Nagoya | University, and Akasaki later with Meijo. | ur-whale wrote: | You are correct, didn't recall correctly. | amelius wrote: | Well, do inventors at Apple ever get any recognition? I only | hear about their product designer Jony Ive. | bumbada wrote: | Usually Apple does not invent anything, they design using | what other people have invented. | | Apple does not focus on research as much as in development. | They put billions into factories that mass produce what has | been already proven to work. | | Multi touch for example was not invented by Apple, Apple | bought a company that invented most of the technology and | brought it into telephones. | | They did not invented Gorilla glass or accelerometers or | small hard drives(like in the old ipod). They approached | inventors and offered using their technologies in the | millions or tens of millions of units. | Blikkentrekker wrote: | I would assume that dues are about money, not recognition. | amelius wrote: | Most likely, but they are very related and I was thinking | about both. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Japan, in general, does not like to highlight individuals; | instead, focusing on the team. | | My boss wrote a book about color management, featuring the | devices we made, and they made him remove his name. He did 100% | of the work. | slow_kindjal wrote: | You are talking about Shuji Nakamura. | biscuit1 wrote: | Anecdotally, Nakamura seems to get most of the credit in | American academia | fireattack wrote: | Probably because he's in American academia? | _Microft wrote: | The effect that some people's work eventually has on everyone's | life can be just amazing. | | In this case it enabled LED lighting for everyone. Transistors | (Bardeen, Shockley), lasers or artificial fertilizer (Haber, | Bosch) also come into mind. | kragen wrote: | Agreed. Also, Norman Borlaug (the Green Revolution which | prevented, or at least postponed, the famine we'd have been | living in for 40 years now, thus saving a billion lives) and | Stanislav Petrov (who refused to raise the alarm in 01983 that | would have started a global thermonuclear war, thus saving | three billion lives). | s0rce wrote: | The Hall-Heroult process for electrolytic aluminum refining is | pretty impactful. Many polymer synthesis processes are also | very impactful day to day, starting with Bakelite (less | relevant now). | ampdepolymerase wrote: | A more important question is, how well were they compensated? | Most of the value are not captured by the original inventors. | netrus wrote: | To be fair, to a certain degree that's part of the deal in | academia. Tenure is like an reverse insurance, everyone gets | a salary, even if only few will be able to make significant | contributions. And that's okay, because a lot of luck is | involved in individual success in academia. | neolog wrote: | What do you mean by original inventor? | outworlder wrote: | Company's gross went from 200 million USD to 800 million USD. | | He got $180. | | After a lawsuit, they settled for around 8 million. | | Got a Nobel prize too. | samatman wrote: | My personal favorite here is John B. Goodenough for lithium-ion | battery chemistry. | | What an amazing name! | oblio wrote: | Also for major contributions to the development of RAM. | | Not bad. Or shall we say, good enough? | robin_reala wrote: | I think my first blue LED was in the power button of the | Playstation 2. Something that made it seem exceptionally | futuristic at the time. | handol wrote: | Then came the fad of the bright blue, "plugged in but turned | off" indicator on consumer electronics that had to be taped | over if you wanted to sleep in the same room as the device. | JonathonW wrote: | The PS2 got it right-- its power button was a red/green | bicolor LED (red on standby; green when powered on). | | The blue LED was on the eject button, and was only lit while | the console was powered on (and a disc was loaded, IIRC). | ed25519FUUU wrote: | This fad has unfortunately not fully died yet! | oblio wrote: | Agreed. One of my monitors can attest to that. Black duct | tape, to match the monitor design :-)) | raimondious wrote: | Yes! One of my first hobby electronics projects as a kid was | adding a blue LED to an RC car just for the cool factor. | gus_massa wrote: | I remember in ~2000, I went with my wife to buy some LEDs. The | price of red, orange, yellow and green was $0.1 each, so we | bought 10 of each. | | We were very surprised that they also had blue LEDs, so we asked | the price and it was $2 each. After some deliberation we only | bought only 2 of them. | | I'm still surprised when I see a cheap toy or device with a blue | or white LED. | hathawsh wrote: | I agree, fond memories. Today you can get all the popular | colors for less than a penny each. | | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32848810276.html | kbelder wrote: | Just as important, or even more-so, this allowed efficient | controllable multicolor and white LED lights, since we already | had red and green LEDs. | edoceo wrote: | Oh, I remember when blue LEDs became readily available (late 90s | for me) and I would mod all my stuff to blue. | | Had this MS ergo keyboard, with the LEDs in the middle hump, came | with green. So, I replaced with these 2.5 hi-blues and I was | blinded by my own Numlock-Beam. Had to cross a resistor over | there to take the edge off. | | Anyway, I think HN should get a black-bar because the blue LED is | so cool. | m_mueller wrote: | Worst one for me is on an older pair of Sony's flagship NC | headphones. Putting them on at night is like flying a plane | with landing lights on, and of course it shines right in the | face of my partner. | Aardwolf wrote: | I found myself taping over some blue LEDs because they were so | bright at night! | bawolff wrote: | Allegedly blue LEDs are supposed to be really disruptive to | sleep (not just due to brightness but due to wavelength. Body | interprets blue as daylight and red dusk or something) | httpsterio wrote: | Well, you're right sort off. Blue light is related to the | production of melatonin, which is used regulate our sleep | cycle. | | Blue light (aka shorter waveforms) blocks the melatonin | production, most likely a genetic factor as the blue | wavelength is related to the sun's day cycle. | samstave wrote: | So as to keep one more alert during daylight hours, and | ready to exert energy? | randrews wrote: | I have a laptop charger with one that I taped over with | kapton tape: the orange kapton is almost the exact opposite | of the blue LED so you're left with a dim white indicator, no | blinding brightness. | boomlinde wrote: | I hate them with a passion for this reason but on second | thought maybe I can't really blame it on the LEDs themselves. | People seem to give them too much forward voltage and don't | always use diffusing packaging, which would have made them | much more pleasant to look at. | | Then again, I rarely see such problems with products with red | or amber LEDs. | | I have a synthesizer with blue LEDs that's particularly | obnoxious. It's probably feeding them 5V and there's of | course no diffusion at all. I've taped all of them over with | a layer of duck tape and they're still too bright. | gertlex wrote: | I did the same thing to my Dell laptop in college when purple | LEDs first became available. And a year or so prior to that | (when my google results were still fruitless), I swapped blue | LEDs in like you, and got a purple-ish result by putting some | pink paper between the LED and the numlock icon (or whichever | it was). I was fascinated to find that the paper faded to white | after a few weeks as a result. | | These days I like yellow, but am lazy and just put kapton tape | over the white LEDs on my desktop... | baybal2 wrote: | Panasonic initially picked a teal LED for its notebook | because it was really, really expensive back in nineties. Few | percents of the laptop cost was that single power LED. | | The legend is that they secured an exclusivity agreement with | Nichia for that colour for some years, but the reality is | much likelly be it just being expensive, and hard to source. | ericj5 wrote: | Do blue LEDs on home electronics bother anyone else at night time | as much as it does me? They appear so much brighter to me than | other colors | Bishop_ wrote: | Yes, I was getting annoyed by an access point I bought that had | blue status lights but amazingly it has a setting that turns | them off either always or during specified hours. I'm floored | that every device doesn't allow you to disable them. | sneak wrote: | Overbright indicators of any kind on electronics bother me. The | brightest are indeed usually blue, but green and red are also | offenders. | chrisseaton wrote: | > Do blue LEDs on home electronics bother anyone else at night | time as much as it does me? | | Don't have home electronics in your bedroom is my advice. | mhh__ wrote: | Having grown up in a small house and spent quite a lot of | time in a friends house which is a lot bigger (I'm still | young, so this was very much post video games for example), I | think the mental separation of having multiple rooms in a | house (rather than everything being done in my bedroom) is | probably worth another 5 or 10 percent on exams for me at | least. The idea of having a "games room" for example is | utterly unthinkable to me still, for example. | kgermino wrote: | Easier said than done unfortunately. | | For example: it's hard to get through summer without a fan or | air conditioner in your bedroom by me. A surprising number of | those come with always on lights and it's not always clear | until you plug them in. | | Beyond that there's just "not everyone has the luxury of a | single purpose room." Especially now, lots of people need to | setup their home office in their bedroom. I have a vacuum | with an always on indicator light, and the only good place to | put it is a bedroom. Some people have studios and their | entire apartment is their "bedroom." | | All in: you're right, it's best to keep your electronics out | of the bedroom, but that's not always practical and way to | many things have unnecessary status lights. | Cerium wrote: | I just black tape everything in my bedroom. I don't need to | see a light to know the fan is on. | shoo wrote: | I have an electric kettle that holds water in a vessel with | transparent sides. When the kettle is turned on and heating | water it illuminates the water with blue LEDs. | | It doesn't bother me at night time as the light goes on only | when it is in use. But the fact that it has lights at all is | bothering. | projektfu wrote: | A deaf person wouldn't be able to hear the kettle going | through its phases. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | That's the feature that sold me on electric kettles! | Tade0 wrote: | My kettle's thermostat only releases the power switch, but | doesn't actually cut the power, so if something is blocking | the switch from going to the "off"(up) position - like a | large plate or something similar - it boils off all the water | and then starts burning itself. | | Happen once and I only noticed because the light was on and I | couldn't hear the water boiling because it wasn't there | anymore. | cush wrote: | Yes! I cover them all up with electrical tape or LightDims | MrDOS wrote: | I remember a Digikey catalogue c.2002? where it seemed like | blue LEDs were the star of the show. Page after page of this | new wonder. And then the following decade-long flood of blue- | LED-festooned consumer products, where every new bit of kit | needed to visually proclaim how new-fangled it was by blasting | out that particularly shrill wavelength of visible light. | | So cool, but so annoying. | grawprog wrote: | I've got a laptop charger with a blue led. It's awful, I have | to remember to unplug it at night, even in the other room. I've | forgotten before and woke up to use the washroom only to find | the whole living room lit up from the little led and I'd feel | instantly wide awake. | | Contrast that with a USB charger I picked up in an emergency, | unaware it had a red led that was on constantly as long as the | cord was receiving power, fucking terrible design and I've | thankfully replaced it, but it didn't bother me too badly when | I had to use it in my room at night. I could still sleep and | everything. | dorkwood wrote: | There has to be another way of showing an appliance is | receiving power which is both visible at night and in broad | daylight. The super-bright LED is overkill in anything but the | brightest lighting scenario, and makes any room immediately | ugly and unpleasant after 6pm. | s0rce wrote: | Yes, I have LightDims (https://www.lightdims.com/) on nearly | everything. | glandium wrote: | I have a hard drive enclosure in the bedroom that was too | bright to my taste. So much so that I opened it to remove it | (which, incidentally, was really easy, it was plugged in the | board via a connector, I didn't even need to cut wires or | anything) | jberryman wrote: | I have a guitar pedal that uses blue and red LEDs to indicate | mode. Part of my bedtime ritual is to stomp it to the red mode. | vidarh wrote: | I have a drawer full of black electrical tape and small round | dot stickers almost entirely due to blue leds. Though it's | convenient on everything. The electrical tape blocks it out | entirely, for the most part. The round stickers let through | some light so is great for dimming it down a bit or just use | multiple to block it completely. | | I think they're so widespread now largely because they were so | expensive when they first started becoming common that they | were used in expensive equipment, and became a way of making | things look higher end. | grishka wrote: | The one in my humidifier bothered me so much I opened the dang | thing and was pleasantly surprised to find the LED on its own | tiny board which I then disconnected. | anorphirith wrote: | I remember reading the article about blue LED's finally being | invented, then about a year later I saw my city (Lyon) started | using them downtown to light the street markers. I as impressed | at the adoption speed | boredpandas777 wrote: | I remember back in 1990 there were no efficient blue LEDs. We | were desperately looking for a solid state blue light source to | get some chemical to fluoresce and the source had to be small and | efficient. The initial SiC diodes which I think came out in | 1992-1994 were not powerful enough. Huge progress has been made | since then. | anyfoo wrote: | I distinctively remember buying my first blue LED in what must | have been the mid-90s. I simply walked into an electronic parts | store and bought a single spare LED. I don't think I had ever | seen a blue LED in action before, it was completely new to me, so | I was very curious. | | It was of the very common standard shape and size LEDs were | during that time, and its case was colorless but cloudy, not | clear. A good thing, because that meant the LED would emit its | light along the entire casing, not just straight forward, making | it much easier to look at. It also wasn't much brighter than | other LEDs, that came later. | | When I applied power and saw it shining in that beautiful blue | color, I was positively amazed. This was so much cooler and so | much more beautiful than the red, green, and yellow LEDs I had | been using before. I distinctively remember just leaving it | attached to power, sitting on my desk, just for something nice to | look at. | stevebmark wrote: | Now's a good time to read up on blue light, macular degeneration, | blue blockers, and F.lux. | karmakaze wrote: | I remember reading the story of the development and breakthrough | of the blue semiconductor laser in Scientific American (in | print). Looked it up[0], it was Sept '97. | | Quite fascinating, it was a holy grail of sorts in that it would | lead to higher resolution applications (Blu-ray) as well as round | out the RGB to be able to make the range of visible colors. One | thing I remember about the article was that it's hard to say | 'blue' with a Japanese accent and it comes out 'true baroo'. | | Shortly after there were lots of expensive blue LEDs being added | to lots of high-end items, including audiophile equipment that | two of my family members made (separate brands: one tube, one | solid-state). | | [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/true-blue/ | sneak wrote: | The purple made by mixing blue LEDs with red LEDs (it's a very | distinct purple) is my favorite color (after black, of course). | | This man made it possible for LED purple to be everywhere. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-02 23:00 UTC)