The First Light Emitting Diodes

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A love letter, straight from my heart - to the beautiful Light Emitting Diode! In this vlog I go deep into my collection and show some of the very first LEDs ever made, review them in context of the history of LED's, and also show some of the coolest and weirdest kinds of LEDs that you'll see around. This one is for hard-core geeks and dweebs only! Thanks for watching...
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[@pirobot668beta]

In the mid 1970's I was in High School, and had subscriptions to every amateur electronics magazine you could name. The buzz about LED's had been around for a while, but they were lab curios, operating in pulsed mode at reduced temperatures. And mostly infrared. Then the commercial units appeared, and I had to have one. The glorious day came when the local Radio Shack had its first visible red LED! It cost about $8.50 in 1974 dollars! I saved my money, mowed some yards, and bought the darn thing. I hooked it up to the power source, and marveled at the ruddy glow! Here was light, being created at the atomic level! Quantum stuff in your hand! It was magical, and I still feel that sense of wonder from time to time.

[@userPrehistoricman]

ungratefulmetalpansy And now Dream Crusher version 1.0 is available at your local walmart!

[@seabiscuits]

I was like this when blue and white ones came out. I had to have them, did nothing with them, just had to have them and light them up!

[@teresashinkansen9402]

I can relate in some way however its much more modern for me. I heard about UVC LEDs but when they became available they costed like $200-600 for a punny LED of about 1mW output in a TO can package with a quartz window, too expensive for me. Fast forward about 10 years I finally got a UVC LED for $80 and it gives about 40mW of 270nm light, i was so happy when i got it and I wanted to turn it on, it has a whitish turquoise glow but that's just stray light the UV its totally invisible but it makes paper and CFL phosphor glow, also if you point it to a dirty surface it starts to smell weird, it has a quartz lens and its very fragile, somehow accidentally chipped a corner, luckily its just a small chip and still works, obviously this is harmful light so no exposure of skin or eyes.

[@alimmi9]

It's really nice to appreciate this stuff from time to time!

[@joroc]

Didn't bulbs produced the same "quantum stuff" in 1970? 🤣🤣

[@frankx8739]

I remember having an early LED display calculator. I opened it up and saw one of those circular rheostats which when adjusted actually changed the clock speed! You could slow it down so much that you could see in slow motion the scanning of the 7-element LED number displays an element at a time. You could also overclock, which reduced battery life, but gave you faster results. (Themdays a SQR request would take a cuppla seconds to calculate(!), due to both limited hardware and poorly optimised algorithms).

[@AtomicShrimp]

Can I just say how adorable it is that you have a favourite LED

[@terranovarain6570]

Yes what a wonderful woman she is

[@Purple431]

@@terranovarain6570 💡

[@layton3503]

Doesn't everyone?

[@JimTheZombieHunter]

@21:24 .. And for decades I thought I was the only "weirdo" who found certain 'pretty' components simply pleasing to look at and touch.

[@richardhead8264]

I love them too, Fran. In fact, I secretly call them *_Love Emitting Diodes!!_*

[@baconology]

you're cute, call me.

[@taunteratwill1787]

@@baconology You're creepy, don't call me.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

@@taunteratwill1787 Word.

[@Purple431]

He's not creepy, i love LEDs too ❤️

[@Miata822]

Back on Christmas of 1975 I got a Radio Shack LED calculator. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. My Mom had an earlier TI LED unit but mine had FUNCTIONS!

[@tenmillionvolts]

When blue LEDs were starting to become a reality, I was so excited. Finally RGB can be created with LEDs. Then I saw one and decided it was a really annoying colour for an LED. Suddenly they were the new power indicator for everything and I was bathed in a horrible piercing blue glow in my living room. I stripped them out and replaced them for other colours. So disappointed!

[@gabotron94]

They were so annoyingly bright in the 2000s! I feel like they just dropped in blue in place for red, without increasing the resistance

[@rarbiart]

_"Happyness is a 10 pound bag of 7segment LEDs"_ (Fran Banche)

[@aidanc4719]

Happiness...is a warm light...

[@marietta5316]

Thanks Fran. 8 years later. Nothing is EVER wasted. I like your Digg.

[@GeorgePapadopoulos11]

I remember in the year 1986 I hold in my hands the first led I had seen in my life, I was amazed from this kind of technology.

[@sabahudinbjedic2242]

Hello :) I have some soviet era LEDs :) they are really cool. And some produced in Bulgaria too. During cold war Bulgaria used to produce microprocessors and their first computer Pravetz II. Greetings from Bulgaria.

[@markg735]

You should check out msylvain59's channel. Lots of interesting Soviet era teardowns. Cheers!

[@SamiJumppanen]

Cool!

[@keithking1985]

@carl hernandez a now that was a cheep shot!! }: (

[@warrengray610]

Hi Fran, the first words you said regarding finding LEDs fascinating from an early age totally took me back to when I was about 5 years old and I found a 30 in 1 build your own electronic project kit, I found it at a jumble sale it didn't work I didn't have any other clue about any of the other components but I figured out I could light this tiny little red light when I connected the battery in one particular way! That was the moment and I have had a penchant for taking stuff apart and seeing how it works ever since! I didn't know or understand any of the other components but at the time I was happy to just stare at this thing for hours! It was at the time the most fascinating thing to look at! ✌️ Of course these days now that I build my own circuits I love LED's because they act as a bridge between me and the user who is reading the information these offer when using one of my gizmos, I don't have to be there, our illuminated friends show what users have to do! Love your show Finally 16:55, they don't make them like that anymore tis a thing of beauty. Kind regards Warren

[@Askjerry]

As you are probably aware Fran, if you shine a light source on an LED, it will generate electricity much like a solar cell. Red LEDs are more sensitive to red light, Green are more sensitive to Green light, and depending on how the Blue is manufactured, they are more sensitive to blue light. This means that you can take an RGB LED and shine white light on it... and have the leads connected to the A/D input of a microprocessor. Then you read this level and presume it to be this highest level... scale it to 255... with no light being 0... and you have a color sensor. Something interesting to play with.

[@TexasRailfan2008]

Very interesting!

[@bloodmoney88]

When I feel down I must remember your outlook. Thanks Fran... wondering at the light emitted from my hand held touch screen.

[@craigenputtock]

You're a remarkable woman.

[@billroberts7881]

All these older LED devices take me back to my college days (late 1960s and early 70s) and the various electronic projects I built during that time. Thanks for all the memories!

[@marcmillis8461]

I have some of those old ones too! Fun. I grew up watching the advances and so amazed and entranced.

[@simonbeasley989]

Brilliant! I watched this on my QLED TV, cast from my AMOLED phone. There's a Cronixie clock under the TV, I haven't replaced a light bulb in 5 years, my bicycle lights are as intense as car headlights but run for hours on a small battery... so LEDs are pretty amazing.

[@NatureAndTech]

I've got some DataSAAB 7-segment LEDs (yes, THAT SAAB company). When SAAB decided to do their own jet fighter, they had to start from zero, and make a computer first. The computer was from 1971, with core memory, and it was used at the local bank well into the 80s. We got to take it apart when it was decommissioned, which is where I got the LED from. As far as I know, the majority of the components ended up in someone's model railroad controller.

[@Datan0de]

These are beautiful LEDs as well as interesting historical "artifacts". It's amazing to compare these to neo pixels or the LED lightbulbs that are becoming common now. I remember the first time I read about blue LEDs in Wired. It was such an amazing breakthrough!

[@rodsims8471]

I took apart my calculator at 7yo , and was in AWW that the leds were , gray when off , and strikingly red when on , I remember my hand held battery powered florescent lamp made interesting , sounds when placed next to my am radio, so I tried with it with the LED calculator .. Mind blown with a harmony of tones . as I eased drop on the RF sounds a calculator makes .. Very Cool !!!

[@flomojo2u]

Just love LEDs too, it was genuinely exciting going to Radio Shack in the 80s and getting an assortment of random red, green, and yellow LEDs. Also amazing to see the continual progression of super bright red LEDs, it seemed impossible that they got so bright. The first blue LED I ever saw was in a diffused white package, very dim but so surreal after a life of red and green or yellow for so long!

[@jeffjoseph8987]

My ex-'s Dad worked for GE and in 1969 brought home a variety of LEDs which I got to play with. He held a patent on some of the first ones.

[@glenthemann]

seeing frans smile as she geeks out hard makes me smile

[@ForumCat]

When Fran smiles the whole of geekdom smiles with her!

[@wozlaser]

thank you for making this, I have an old LED collection too, few understand the magic

[@keithking1985]

@@ForumCat you said it bud!!

[@Purple431]

In the past, I have collected a bunch of white leds and I have no idea where they are to this day but I might get a box of colored leds for my birthday. I am a fan this technology and probably will be for the rest of my life to come, awesome collection!

[@RexxSchneider]

I bought my first LED in autumn 1968 when I stopped off in London on my way for interview at Kent University. There was a component shop in Tottenham Court Road (name escapes me) that sold the first infra-red LED that I'd seen. It was in a metal case that was intended to be strapped to a heatsink and came with a quartz lens to focus the beam. I was eventually able to transmit a signal across the living room and detect it with a photodiode, but setting up was very tricky as you couldn't see where the beam was.

[@xheralt]

I vividly remember the smell they make when you fry them by putting too much voltage thru them. The joys of experimenting. When I could, I bought small LED assortments from Radio Shack.

[@musicmanloxton]

@Fran Blanche If my memory serves me correctly, that TO92 IS actually a working transistor. It would light up to indicate the transistor is in use. I had my hand on a few of these back in the late 80's.

[@_who_cares_1123]

If that is true, They would be very usefull. I mean you can beild e.G. a Ne555 out of those transistors and see how the ic works

[@musicmanloxton]

It would be interesting to see that type of setup in action.

[@BlankBrain]

+Dwayne Madden I thought it might be a HEMT (high-electron-mobility transistor) used for high gain, high frequency with low noise. The visible characteristic would be an added benefit.

[@californiakayaker]

Would love to see it plugged into a component tester, producing a diagram and other data. It would also flash while being tested.

[@shonaoneill5151]

Dwayne Madden I first saw my first LED tv in a large co-op in Derby, UK. I was 12, so it would have 26 years ago. Now, I understand that they were used well before this, but this was the first of the many flat screens to come, that I had ever seen. But, let me tell you.....The picture quality was brutal, it was so bad in fact that my friend and I had to stand almost the full diagonal length of the store to see that they were showing a football match! All for the princely sum of £3000! I honestly couldn't believe that something like this (at the time) would be the future of modern technology, eg monitors/tvs/phones/touchscreen technology, all lighting throughout my home, to name but a few.....The list is MASSIVE. I was glad to see this cool video....I really enjoy this persons dialogue, she is an interesting person.

[@DIY-valvular]

Thanks to the success of your clips on the BINA VIEW, the algorithm brought us the video of your amazing collection of old LEDs! Double thumbs up for this!

[@goodun2974]

I'd like to see Fran do a segment ( ha ha) on vacuum-tube-type florescent displays such as those used in many digital clocks and audio receivers of the 80s and 90's. Typically blue or green, they look so much nicer than modern LED or LCD displays (often orange).

[@darylcheshire1618]

My first calculator in 1975 didn’t have LEDs, it had an electro luminescent display which was a small vacuum tube with ten numbers in it. That was an improvement over the Sharp Elsi Mate which had a 3.5 digit display and showed larger numbers 3 digits at a time and cost around $300.

[@mfbfreak]

i have a little handheld frequency counter, with those tiny 7 segment displays with the bubble lens on it. It looks so cool!

[@phillipbartlett1187]

I thought I was the biggest fan! I even replaced the green led in my PlayStation 1 to a blue to be the coolest one out there. Well now you have me looking for those to-92 ones. Thanks and cool video.

[@BPantherPink]

Fran, just love you, your way of talking and your passion in the most mundane of things. Though not LEDs... they are fascinating. I have them all over my house and I will buy anything that has them!!! Just love all of your videos and your explanations. God Bless.

[@drdos4]

Blue LEDs sure fascinate me. I tinkered a bunch with breadboards as a kid in the late 90s, and one day my grandfather brings home a blue LED for me. Never saw anything like it, there were no blue lights in consumer products. Seeing them in this video still brings a little nostalgia.

[@artdonovandesign]

The first Blue LED I saw was amazing!!! Color SO VIVID. So pure blue! There was never anything like it.

[@SiblingCreature]

I dabbled with electronics briefly in my teen years in the 90s. My favourite leds were the so called tricolour red/yellow/green leds. all it was was a red die and a green die connected in opposing polarities, so you could get red or green with a direct current flowing in either direction, or you could get "yellow" with an alternating current which would switch between the red and green so quickly they blended together.

[@XFolf]

Ok, that TO-92 package LED is just freakin' cool. Vintage LEDs are as unique and cool as vintage incandescents.

[@cristianchisbora8289]

Fran, congrats for keeping them alive for us to see. You have a little goldmine there :). Not too many of us are fond of keeping history alive nowadays. Hope to see you posting new videos soon, to enchant our senses.

[@CNCmachiningisfun]

I have tens of thousands of leds here. They are amazing little devices. It is a wonder that I don't have "led poisoning", considering how often I use these in projects :) .

[@the_punisher01]

CNCmachiningisfun What a privilege :) Good for You. Poisoning no but LEDaholic for sure :)))

[@eloyex]

you have thousands .... what about i have aro 2 MM pcs ..? (well, we sell leds... that is the reason ...) LED's are amazing !! right ?

[@CNCmachiningisfun]

Yes indeed, you have enough LEDs to light up the darkest of places :) . There's no doubt about it, you are addicted to LEDs.

[@louistournas120]

+CNCmachiningisfun: You might get arsenic poisoning if you open them and burn the GaAsP crystal in open air.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

@@CNCmachiningisfun There is a song in there somewhere.

[@GlassDeviant]

We must be close to the same age. I remember way back when I was more curious and motivated, I took the various parts from several calculators and managed to reprogram the core chip to run four displays as if they were one, because I was not satisfied by the limited number of digits provided by commercial calculators. Wish I still had it, but we moved a lot when I was growing up and had to pare down possessions frequently. It was kind of like making digital counters/calculators in Factorio, but we didn't have Factorio back then.

[@CameraCapers]

Your video was Frantastic!

[@Totalinternalreflection]

I didn’t see LEDs until the early 90s and they were red. Really impressed you so many from so much earlier than that.

[@lookthrumyeyes]

I have toyed with LEDs since the late 80s. I was also quite fascinated by them, though not as much as you :) I remeber getting my hands on a 3 pin LEd, somewhat like that gold-plated, transistor shaped one, but it used to light up well. It had two different colors built in one (this was awesome considering it was in the late 80s) and hence the three pins. All in all, awesome stuff you got there. Your video is bookmarked :)

[@blurrrrrr44]

Vintage electronics are fascinating. The early blue & green are so pretty compared to what we have now.

[@thedoggedexplorer]

17:03 I had a genuine moment of understanding. Thank you Fran!

[@MichiganPeatMoss]

Wow, the LEDs shaped like TO-92 transistors. So cool!

[@fourzerofour7860]

I used to have a lot of LED's (early ones) when I was a kid... but none as old as some of these. :D I remember thinking "Why don't they make flashlights out of these?" and i had even made some of my own (probably inefficient) lights from them. Well, here we are in 2017 and every bulb is an LED unless you go hunting for an 'old fashioned' one to be a hipster.

[@BinjKomisar11]

I Love how mindful and appreciative you are. I really enjoy learning the history of the various aspects of electronics. Love your videos. You are awesome Fran, truly a real gem. Peace. -Ben :D

[@ThomasWinders]

I don't know why I am watching this at three in the morning... anyways, very interesting lesson about leds so... thumb up! 21:39 - I'd make a ring, or a pendant out of it - it's so beautiful!! and there's something for you: once I stole an led from the place where I work. There were some leds every now and there, over some doors, maybe for emergency/fire signalling purpouses, I don't know because I've never seen one light up (fortunately, you might say). Some doors had a green led on, some had one yellow and one green, and some others a red one too. The fact that caught my attention was that those leds were HUGE - I mean, each led was like 3 cm in diameter. So I disassembled three of them (I used them as a mod on a computer case), and the strange thing was that each led had a GND connector plus 2 or 3 other pins, and connecting more pins, the led got brighter... don't know if you ever stumbled upon them.

[@02R96]

Hi Fran (I love your videos on early tech). I'm wondering if you remember the first digital watches which were actually tiny red led's. They were all the rage when they first came out.

[@tinotrivino]

When I was 14 years old, I was a fanatic of electronics, I told people that why dont fabricate Monitors based on LEDS i mean dots per inch was alrady there, pixels etc, we could use leds for that.. people laughed at me... today... we have LED TVs :-p Here is how you destroy masterminds, now i am just a lousy filmmaker hahaha (here again, i talked about several cameras before the matrix effect was discovered), again... people laughed :p now we have 360º Cams :p lol

[@ArnaudMEURET]

Tino Trivino Yeah, you give them too much honor by calling it that. I saw this effect in TV commercials years before the film.

[@dishmanw]

I had been sort think the same thing. When I was taking a digital electronics class, I had thought about building a computer using a display with an LED matrix.

[@chaos.corner]

There were (big) displays of discreet LEDs. The main issue with building a consumer level device is consistency and reliability. You're packing together the better part of a a million LEDs and if even one is dead, that's a display you have to trash. It's taken a lot of advancement in process to get this far.

[@goodun2974]

The best LED TV in the world is useless without good *content*. The world doesn't really need "better" televisions, but we desperately need better content! So, stick to film-making! PS, you appear to have an Italian name; some my favorite movies are Italian. Cinema Paradiso; Queen of Hearts; and the recent CopperMan, all wonderful.

[@bobcat6653]

You are a gem! Thanks for sharing this. I too have a couple of MV10B's from Monsanto, one still sealed in the original packaging. I remember in high school poking an LED out of my chest pocket going to 2 AA batteries, II thought that was so so cool. Thanks Fran!

[@arjovenzia]

As a career electronic geek, and working with LED signage on the daily, seeing some of these early units is really cool. I have to attribute LED's to my introduction into electronics, playing with dads junk box. thanks for showing us your collection, greatly appreciated

[@KitCox]

WOW! I spotted that 8 digit, red led, four banger next to the gray(ugh, NOT Fluke(Oh, the shame)) meter. Looks exactly like the first one I had, same color, case etc. I had gotten one of the first ones when they came out, 9V batt. A friend of mine got the first TI scientific a few months later, $179. I couldn't afford it at the time though I was fascinated at the log and trig functions that used to kill me in trig class. Yours is the first lab I've seen a variac in!!. Indispensable for the good ol' days of (ugh)tube televison. Man, I've been bangin' around on Dave and Jerri's sites and just found yours. Where the hell have I been for the last 6 months?

[@-yeme-]

that one at 21:20 could be a piece of jewellery

[@pete5668]

that plastic board thing looks like a very sophisticated cribbage board, or a seating map for a very wide airliner. :)

[@randomcow505]

that green LED at 15:20 reminds me so much of being a kid fucking about with my dads old electronics

[@thehippigeek3963]

learning leds with fran. nothing but the best baby!

[@matbillings2533]

I know this is an old vid alas it's crazy how far led tech has come!

[@higherground711]

This was fun. 🙆 Watching you bring those LEDs to life was oddly satisfying. That blue one you lit up was beautiful! It was like a pthalo blue green shade. Thanks.

[@alexpowers3697]

I noticed as a kid when I listened to my crystal radio in the middle of the night, I could actually see a very tiny feint light coming out of the detector diode. I thought that was cool. Awesome collection!

[@allanpatterson7653]

I thought that was an illusion. I used a 150 foot long wire horizontal clothesline antenna. Howard Sams pushed a one transistor class A amp circuit I think it was CK722 or 2N107

[@TauCu]

Little known fact, if you overvolt an LED it becomes momentarily an SED (Smoke emitting diode)

[@GregorOttmann]

It's nice to see that I'm not the only person who is romantically involved with LEDs. If Fran can have a LED fetish, so can I. Which I do. I guess I have to order some more of those ultra-bright UV LEDs now ...

[@EduardRitok]

I always thought monsanto was only into agriculture ...i am shocked xD

[@stuartvalentine2884]

Maybe your favourite three pin led is for an optical counting wheel with holes in it and a light sensor to count the pulses?

[@mlbabineaux]

I had a bunch of those green LED's. Sanyo used them in some of their consumer electronics

[@danthor45]

old tech is the best. without it nothing is like it is now. thank you old teck. and fran for showing us the past :D

[@crumplezone1]

Hey Fran you have taught your cat to `Meow` when you say the word `De-bouncing!" how cool is that ! whoop whoop !!

[@stevematson4808]

Almost as impressive as teaching your cat to say De-bouncing when you say Meow.

[@Mukeshmiktecrep]

Fran, now I am a fan of LEDs.

[@Gexzumi]

This video is heaven. I've always felt the same way about LEDs. As a kid Radio Shack was my second home mostly because of them. I would buy them and stick them in things with dead watch batteries which still had enough power for them any chance I got. At a summer camp we were supposed to draw a picture and stick the little ornament incandescent bulbs in them and I brought some LEDs from home and used those instead haha. Then as an adult when automotive LEDs started becoming a thing I replaced every single bulb and light fixture with LEDs. Then when LED light bulbs kicked off replaced every single bulb in the house with LEDs. LEDs are amazing! Instant subscriber!

[@video99couk]

Tandy (Radio Shack in the UK) used to sell packets of assorted LEDs, all kinds of weird and wonderful designs like ones with Fresnel lenses. I used to love getting those, and still have some. Kept waiting for a blue one, but by then Tandy had gone.

[@Gexzumi]

I loved those little packets of assorted LEDs! It was a great way to get a bunch of different kinds of LEDs without having to buy them individually (plus the fact that sometimes they contained ones they didn't even sell individually). I believe I still have most of them somewhere as well.

[@mikeangelo6667]

I have a few LED battery-operated dome lights, which I covered with wax paper to diffuse them. They are now easier on the eyes.

[@wheretonow3106]

Fran, Is quickly growing on me.

[@Dennis-et9vq]

I remember them coming out around the transistor time. Always red for a long time and pretty weak in light output. Then there were some orange green and yellow ones, so I am told as I am color blind, there was little difference in their color to me. I wanted blue and in time it came but was ages later. I even have a few violet, so I'm told, all look blue to me. Early ones needed about 2 volts at 20 mA. And yes I had an early calculator too. I thought I'd keep it as it would probably be valuable in time- but it disappeared. Love your vids. PS you change hair styles a lot and hair color but nice whatever.

[@meepferret]

I remember trying to buy a color LED from a Popular Electronics ad. My dad had to write the check (I was too young for a checking account) and I got ... NOTHING! Followups went nowhere, Pop 'tronics refused to intervene. A harsh lesson to learn: some things are vaporware 😞

[@johnkapri6306]

In the VW model T3 (1979-1992) there was a blue upper beam indicator light in the dashboard. The indicators for oil, battery and blinker were all LEDs (red, red and green) and in early vehicles the upper beam inducator was a yellow LED, but at least in Germany this indicator has to be blue and so in later versions they had to change that yellow LED for a little lightbulb with a blue cap. When I was little (~5 y.o.) I was always fascinated that they had a blue LED in the dashboard of such an old car. That was around 2000 when blue LEDs just got commonly available. It was a very nice cream blue, almost like a baby blue. I used to hunt that color LEDs in every electronics catalog I could get my hands on. Conrad, Mouser, Buerklin, ... It was when I was looking for it in a replacement parts catalog for the T3 when I found out I had been fooled that entire time.

[@simonthechipmunkCC]

+John Kapri Haha exact same for me here. I recently had to disassemble the dashboard of our T4 and was wondering too how they got their hands on blue LEDs at the time. I actually laughed at their well covered trickery there. It is done so well that you can barely catch the difference between the LEDs and the bulb. A similar thing are old measuring devices. We once broke apart an old ground resistance meter from the late 70s during my apprenticeship and were coming across some optocoupler: Actually a light bulb and a photo-resistor covered with a rubber tube. Shows how expensive LEDs were back then because they were reserved for the indicators on the scale where you could see them.

[@cebruthius]

Hahaha I've been wondering for years about the instrument cluster of a Golf Mk2 we had.

[@the_punisher01]

John Kapri Lovely comment. I had also the same experience :) Those good old times newer will come back ...

[@grossteilfahrer]

We had a 82 and a 84 passat.mkII. The 82 had a yellow led with blue symbol above for hibeam, the 84 had a blue led.. which someone above says was a lamp with filter. This was in Sweden.

[@watershed44]

Ronny Svedman Yes, curious. I know that blue LEDs were invented in the 80s by a Japanese company, and although it is possible it is a incandescent with blue filter, I honestly don't believe that is what was in that Rabbit I had from 1984. I'm almost positive it was an actual blue led.

[@TheEPROM9]

I love vintage display tech, VFD, Nixie, CRT, Panplex, Orange Plasma are some of my favrat. If it is some form of discharge tube then I love it. =-)

[@louistournas120]

I have had the idea for a light emitting transistor. I did not know that they existed.

[@mmaldonadojr]

I had a Novus 850 when I was a kid. If I knew better at that time, I would have spared it as a good souvenir for today instead of dismantling it to see how it was built!

[@kevinbyrne4538]

In 1907 Henry J. Round of England found that passing current through a cat's whisker electrode touching a lump of silicon carbide would sometimes cause the carbide to glow at the point of contact. It was the first LED.

[@airindiana]

Kevin Byrne LEC light emitting cat

[@acmefixer1]

Actually a Russian was inventing silicon carbide light emitters before Round. Nick Holonyak got the credit for the original red LED.

[@kevinbyrne4538]

@@acmefixer1 -- You're probably referring to Oleg Losev, who published his findings in 1927.

[@stevejohnson1685]

I love the sight of a 1970's era LED refracted and reflected through a faceted plexiglas bezel! A friend of mine (Tullio Proni) and I both made LED pendants for science fiction fans with plexiglas fronts, mirrored plexiglas backs, with small batteries and circuitry behind. We used 555s, LM3909s (invented by Carl Kleiner, another SF fan), or XR-2240 (?) sequencers. About the same time, I got an HP-35 calculator for college. With friends, we played with those LEDs dunked in liquid nitrogen, cranking amps of current through them, until they became plastic-emitting diodes :-) Fond memories. Thanks for your great KZbin series. Happily subscribed.

[@xheralt]

Was anybody else going _"NOOOOO, don't open the package, you'll ruin its value as a collectible!"_ Just kidding, I don't really worry about that, either.

[@joepizza7579]

You are a true treasure! I can only imagine you as a friend , I would want to listen to you talk for hours .

[@BertGrink]

+Fran Blanche Hi Fran, i was so intrigued by those TO-92 LEDs that i just HAD to google them, and this is what came up: www.industrialalchemy.org/articleview.php?item=670 to quote from the website:"This device is a mundane red LED die in a strange enclosure: a standard TO-92 transistor package. Electronics lore states that Motorola made these parts-of-questionable-judgment under contract for use in camera rangefinders. The existence of such a device stands as a depressing reminder that, at one point in the not-so-distant past, it was actually economically viable to increase the gold content of your product by 50% if it would allow you to avoid changing your package tooling." Very interesting video, thanks for sharing :D

[@ktotheswiss1617]

Fran Blanche is my addiction.

[@atomipi]

I'll have to send you some of my spare rare leds and displays one day.. that is if you do like collecting them and showing them off for all to see. no one will ever see my ones, best they go to a good home :)

[@gizmothewytchdoktor1049]

"i'm the operator with my pocket calculator" a quote worthy of the time. i had a Ti unit ;-)

[@joesmoe6855]

I Could Have watched this for days

[@videomentaryproductionschannel]

,You are such an interesting woman you have so many interesting things about you, and that is makes you unique, I have been watching your videos for about 4 years now, have started looking back at some of your really early once, they all have there interesting points, keep them coming Fran ☺️ and we'll ok

[@nigelpearson6664]

LEDs make cheap band-gap voltage references. Red is circa 1.6V, Blue higher. Often better choices in critical applications where a 1N4007/4148 might be used. Tube guys use them as cathode references. For that I prefer a resistor. Sometimes a 1N4148 tracks a transistor better. If so a transistor is even better. A current mirror comes to mind.

[@Ghozer]

I have a Pioneer tuner from 1981 that has a blue LED in it.. - the TX 520 I'm unsure what sort of blue LED, as it had a blue casing, was square, and was a really nice blue..

[@ZylonFPV]

Enjoyed this video a lot 🙂 70S LEDs seem really dim

[@BrekMartin]

Nice :) I'd never have kept that stuff.

[@aaroncake]

I remember making a pulsating LED display in the mid '90s and wanted something spectacular in the center: a blue LED. It cost $20 and had to be ordered into the local electronics store (remember those?). Two weeks later it arrived and everyone in the store gathered to see it. And at that point I found out that it needed a good 5V or so to light. Which meant adding a 2N3904 on the back of the PCB and drilling some extra holes to drive the blue LED separately.

[@arcadeuk]

I LOVE experimenting with modern LED display technologies (as you may see from my space invader LED avatar :) Enjoying playing with the WS2811 fully adressable RGB LED's at the moment, they are amazing. Loved this video, very interesting! Subscribed!!

[@arturtrzebinski2112]

33:20 "I'm sorry Fran, I'm afraid I can't do that"

[@lochinvar00465]

My first LED was one of the second one you showed.(circa 1972) Yeh, it was dim. I tried putting a lens in front of it and focusing a spot on the wall which could only be seen if the lights were turned off. Later experiments with LEDs of the late 70's I was able to use one to send pulsed light a few feet to a photocell hooked up to my o-scope(without using lenses), altho it was rated at 50ma, the pulses peaked at one amp. The pulses were so short you couldn't see them. And if the rep rate got too high, it would burn it out.

[@bobair2]

Hello,I rather enjoy your videos and this one is very good as you appreciate the artistic merits of the LEDs in a way that most people do not.I love the early transistor case designs in a similar way-they are cool looking devices!!!

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

I remember the first time I saw a blue LED. I had never seen anything like it - its brightness and colour. The idea was to use it with a type of fax paper to create images of satellite signals we were receiving.

[@Cashpots]

You said you'd include links to some good led sites. Either I an't see the links (because I'm old and doddery) or you forgot. Got any please? Rob.

[@daveogarf]

VERY Informative!

[@tomhardy7359]

I’d love to see more retro components videos.