Nobel prize for blue

[micky]

I think 3 people won the Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the blue
LED.

Did the inventor of the first (red) LED get a Nobel prize. It seems a
lot harder to invent the first one than the third or fourth.

The red guy perhaps was the first to think of the idea, but even if not,
he had to think it could be done and then go do it.

The blue guy just has to try many many combinations unitil he finds one
that is blue. Just because it's the last piece in the puzzle, I don't
think it's Nobel-worthy.

[John Robertson]

Quite a reasonable question:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nobel-prize-2014-inventor-of-the-red-led-hits-out-at-committee-for-overlooking-his-seminal-1960s-work-9782948.html

I too would think that the original inventor should have been honoured,
not just some fine-tuners along the way...

John :-#(#
--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
(604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

[rbowman]

micky wrote:

> Did the inventor of the first (red) LED get a Nobel prize. It seems a
> lot harder to invent the first one than the third or fourth.

No, and he's pissed.

[jurb...@gmail.com]

>"I too would think that the original inventor should have been honoured, ..."

If I am not mistaken, they have decided the Tesla, not Marconi, invented radio. Here is a scathing rant on that :

http://earlyradiohistory.us/tesla.htm

Well osmewhat.

Some people think Henry Ford invented the car. It is a matter of thinking. henry Ford, along wiht Adolf Hitler, were the ones who worked to put cars in the hands of ordinary people, not justthe well to do. Deusenbergs wrre around for a longtime, so were other companies.

So, on one hand if you make license for anythining even 1,000 years ago, that has one result. If you make patents and copyrights only good foro three years say, that has another result. The US has some of the toughest intellectual property laws on the planet. no wonder the entertainment industry deos so well.

Fuck, who knows, we can take this back to Og the wheel inventor. And your psychological hangups, all traceable back to Adam and Eve.

We need another wheel inventor. ButI will handle the business.

[J Burns]

H. J. Round discovered electroluminescence with silicon carbide in 1907.
No practical use was found.

I'm sure the when committee evaluated wrist watches and calculators with
red-led displays, they realized red LED's had no practical use.

The most important part of the Nobel Prize is the banquet. The most
important aspect of the banquet is the color of the lighting. Blue was
what they'd been missing.

Dr. Roland Haitz deserves the prize. His law made it mandatory to double
the light output of LED's every 36 months.

[Robert Green]

"John Robertson" <sp...@flippers.com> wrote in message

<stuff snipped>

> I too would think that the original inventor should have been honoured,
> not just some fine-tuners along the way...
>
> John :-#(#

If anyone still believes the Nobel Prize committee knows *anything* about
prize-worthiness after Obama snagged a peace prize, then they deserve a
Nobel prize for gullibility. The (A)cademy of (S)wedish (S)cience is still
apologizing for Alf's unleashing dynamite on the world.

FWIW, a Russian really invented the LED in 1942.

--
Bobby G.

[N_Cook]

Fair point, certainly wrt yellow or green or orange but blue was the
key to getting to white LED-light, a quantum leap ;-)

[Arfa Daily]

"N_Cook" <div...@tcp.co.uk> wrote in message
news:m1l7q0$sts$1...@dont-email.me...

For once, I agree ...

Arfa

[Michael Black]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:

>> "I too would think that the original inventor should have been honoured, ..."
>
> If I am not mistaken, they have decided the Tesla, not Marconi, invented radio. Here is a scathing rant on that :
>
> http://earlyradiohistory.us/tesla.htm
>
> Well osmewhat.
>

Marconi didn't invent radio, and never claimed to.

He took what was available, took it out of the lab, and showed that it
could actually be used for long distance communication. It was just a lab
novelty before he spanned the Atlantic in December of 1901, then soon
after radio was being used by ships at sea. It was still relatively
experimental, so there were all those pesky amateurs playing with it, and
out of that play came radio as we came to know it.

Marconi never claimed to be more than an amateur. INdeed, he had no
technical background.

Michael

[Michael Black]

This is a repair question?

They are judging on impact. The LED was around for some years, expensive
and a lab curiosity, and then in the early seventies we were able to buy
them as surplus. Not very bright, but even about the same time as we
could get red LEDs cheap, there were green and orange and yellow. A neat
thing, but they weren't a radical change. Anything you could do with
LEDs could be done with incandescent light bulbs. Lots of things get
invented, and don't win a Nobel Prize.

And the decades went by, finally a blue LED. That was neat, started all
kinds of talk about RGB LEDs to make tv sets or other displays. I remember
how bright those blue ones were even when they'd filtered down to the
hobby market. Suddenly, you could use LEDs as flashlights, if you could
live with blue. I don't know if they affected what had come before, but
suddenly you could also get easily high light output red LEDs.

It's worth pointing out that it took a long time for blue LEDs to come
along because it wasn't a matter of minor changes to LEDs to get differetn
colors (or at least not after the initial orange/green/yellow), but a
different process. It was a case of having to start from scratch.

And then not that much later, white LEDs, as someone pointed out, they
happened because blue were available and were the foundation of white
LEDs.

So suddenly we could have flashlights that were "normal" light, and no
more flashlights that didn't work when they were needed because the
filament broke.

And a whole lot more development happened as a result. There was limited
use for high light output red or green LEDs, but a lot of use for high
output white LEDs. Whole different design, not the packaged LEDs as we
know it, but a different package so the LED could be heatsinked and they
didn't need the lens in the package to get more light output (or direct
the light). So no more need for that long extension cord when you need
that trouble light, this thing is bright enough to temporarily blind you
if you look at it suddenly in the dark.

Wham, no more CFL bulbs in monitors, just white LEDs for the backlight,
longer life and probably lower current drain.

And then LED bulbs to replace incandescent and more recently CFL bulbs.
They seem to work better than the CFLs, but they certainly use less
current for the same light output as incandescent. So that will impact on
things in the long run, lower demands for electricity in the home, or in
places where there really isn't electricity, real electric lighting that
can be powered off a battery and solar cells to recharge it.

They are looking at the big picture.

Michael

[Bill Gill]

There was a lot more to it than just "try many combinations".
Here is a link to a story that tells why blue the blue LED
was a real break through.

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2014/10/07/nobel-prize-for-blue-leds/

Bill

[Michael Black]

Yes, it took a long time to find blue. When were LEDs invented? By the
late sixties, at least, and maybe early sixties, taking some time to come
to production. Blue arrived in the mid or late eighties. So even if they
were just trying everything at random, that's a long time to find
something that did go blue.

Michael

[jf...@my-deja.com]

The interview I read was with Nick Holonyak who made the first visible red LED. I think the key scientific breakthrough came earlier with the GaAs infrared LED which showed the importance of the direct band gap and the use of III-V compound semiconductors.

[Jerry Peters]

In sci.electronics.repair Robert Green <robert_g...@yah00.com> wrote:
> "John Robertson" <sp...@flippers.com> wrote in message
>
> <stuff snipped>
>
>> I too would think that the original inventor should have been honoured,
>> not just some fine-tuners along the way...
>>
>> John :-#(#
>
> If anyone still believes the Nobel Prize committee knows *anything* about
> prize-worthiness after Obama snagged a peace prize, then they deserve a
> Nobel prize for gullibility. The (A)cademy of (S)wedish (S)cience is still
> apologizing for Alf's unleashing dynamite on the world.

The peace prize is awarded by the Norwegian parliament. It's a
political prize, nothing to do with science.

[Pico Rico]

"Jerry Peters" <je...@example.invalid> wrote in message
news:m1mkvt$qpm$3...@dont-email.me...

> In sci.electronics.repair Robert Green <robert_g...@yah00.com> wrote:
>> "John Robertson" <sp...@flippers.com> wrote in message
>>
>> <stuff snipped>
>>
>>> I too would think that the original inventor should have been honoured,
>>> not just some fine-tuners along the way...
>>>
>>> John :-#(#
>>
>> If anyone still believes the Nobel Prize committee knows *anything* about
>> prize-worthiness after Obama snagged a peace prize, then they deserve a
>> Nobel prize for gullibility. The (A)cademy of (S)wedish (S)cience is
>> still
>> apologizing for Alf's unleashing dynamite on the world.
>
> The peace prize is awarded by the Norwegian parliament. It's a
> political prize, nothing to do with science.
>

or peace.

[larrymo...@my-deja.com]

On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 8:51:08 PM UTC-7, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Some people think Henry Ford invented the car. It is a

> matter of thinking. Henry Ford, along with Adolf Hitler,

> were the ones who worked to put cars in the hands of

> ordinary people, not just the well to do. Deusenbergs were

> around for a longtime, so were other companies.

Henry Ford invented the first car that really mattered.
More importantly, Henry Ford invented the modern age.

Why did the Nobel committee ignore Tom Haverford and
Jean-Ralphio Saperstein for their invention of a new
shade of black for business cards?

[Michael A. Terrell]

larrymo...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 8:51:08 PM UTC-7, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > Some people think Henry Ford invented the car. It is a
> > matter of thinking. Henry Ford, along with Adolf Hitler,
> > were the ones who worked to put cars in the hands of
> > ordinary people, not just the well to do. Deusenbergs were
> > around for a longtime, so were other companies.
>
> Henry Ford invented the first car that really mattered.
> More importantly, Henry Ford invented the modern age.

No. He took existing production line concepts and applied them to a
simple car he designed. Prior to that, each car was built one at a time
which was slow and expensive.

The production line was developed to build rifles for the U.S. Army,
with interchangable parts.


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

[josephkk]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 10:33:22 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
<mike.t...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>
>larrymo...@my-deja.com wrote:
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 8:51:08 PM UTC-7, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >
>> > Some people think Henry Ford invented the car. It is a
>> > matter of thinking. Henry Ford, along with Adolf Hitler,
>> > were the ones who worked to put cars in the hands of
>> > ordinary people, not just the well to do. Deusenbergs were
>> > around for a longtime, so were other companies.
>>
>> Henry Ford invented the first car that really mattered.
>> More importantly, Henry Ford invented the modern age.
>
>
> No. He took existing production line concepts and applied them to a
>simple car he designed. Prior to that, each car was built one at a time
>which was slow and expensive.
>
> The production line was developed to build rifles for the U.S. Army,
>with interchangable parts.

Interchangable parts (specifically for guns) is at least 50 years older
than H. Fords production line for cars.

?-)

[josephkk]

No, not a quantum leap. Certainly not compared to the initial LED.

?-)

[josephkk]

Well, sort of. The Nobel is a political award, as evidenced by giving one
to Yassir Arafat an aging ex-terrorist. The blue improvement was
incremental compared to making LEDs the first time. Also just look at
what body controls the awards.

?-)

[Arfa Daily]

"josephkk" <joseph_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:uci84ap76emjltejv...@4ax.com...

I rather think it was actually. The principle of the LED had been known for
a long time, and producing the first commercially successful ones was more a
case of tweaking and refining than 'real' innovation. Producing the other
long and medium wavelength colours such as yellow and green was a variation
on a theme. Producing a successful blue LED with a useable level of output
was rather more difficult and defeated those who were trying for many years.
I can remember the first LEDs appearing, and yes, for sure, they were an
interesting component that made it possible to produce low voltage numeric
displays and panel indicators, and the other colours that followed improved
the versatility in that respect, but the real 'holy grail' was the blue one
which, as Mr Cook suggests, was the final puzzle piece to open up the way
for full colour video display panels, and white light for space lighting ...

Arfa

[William Sommerwerck]

Isn't the real question whether blue LEDs were the result of engineering
breakthroughs, or fundamental scientific research?

Based on what I read a few months ago about the dogged work of the man who
made the breakthrough, I'm inclined to go with the former, and say that this
work was not worthy of a Nobel for physics.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Yes, but he was the first to apply that to building cars to bring the
price down enough for thee average working man.

[Arfa Daily]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzle...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:m21osl$pde$1...@dont-email.me...

Although the first 'true' LEDs were produced quite early in the 20th
century, as far as I can see, it was not technical development that held
back commercial production for another 30 or 40 years. Rather, it was one of
those curiosities that no-one could see much use for. For sure, that changed
as a result of ongoing research and development, and of course discovery of
improved materials and techniques, but it was all variations and
improvements on a theme.

On the other hand, attempts to produce a blue emitting LED, were pretty much
continuous after the introduction of the long and medium wavelength devices,
because this was the holy grail for true usefulness of the technology.
Production of a blue LED requires the use of different materials that are
extremely difficult to apply semiconductor creation techniques to, and doing
so defeated the best scientific brains, world-wide, for a generation. The
fact that someone finally did, paving the way to the usability quantum leap
after 30 years of intensive world-wide attempts is, in my humble opinion,
probably the most note-worthy event of the whole LED story.

Does that deserve a NPP ? Hard to say. As others have commented, they are
not really about what they appear to be on the surface, but I certainly
wouldn't have said that it was any less deserving than the original
invention, which of course was major in its own right, and as I said, in my
opinion probably a lot more so, not least for the huge potential that it has
released for energy saving in lighting world-wide ...

Arfa
>