Possibly offtopic - Vintage MV1 LEDs for sale

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AnubisTTP

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Apr 12, 2018, 7:51:31 AM4/12/18
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I am not sure if this is offtopic or not, if so, mods please remove. I have recently come into possession of a small quantity of Monsanto MV1 LEDs... the MV1 is the first commercially produced LED, released in 1968. I am selling these for $12 dollars each; I figured I would try selling them here before going to Ebay. The only one of these to come up on Ebay in the past 6 months or so sold for $30 dollars, so this is quite a good deal. Contact me offlist at anubis#industrialalchemy.org (change pound to at symbol) if you are interested. I am located in the US, Paypal payment and international shipping are available.

Here is a link with more information about the Monsanto MV1 LED.

http://www.industrialalchemy.org/articleview.php?item=975

Nick

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Apr 12, 2018, 10:22:15 AM4/12/18
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This is fine. No problem.

Mods

jb-electronics

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Apr 12, 2018, 11:09:44 AM4/12/18
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This is pretty interesting. On the pictures on your website the LED looks a bit dim. (But, having photographed my share of Nixie tubes, I know how difficult it can be to get the brightness and all details right.) So I am just wondering how bright this LED appears in person? Also, what current does it draw?

Cheers
Jens
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Terry S

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Apr 12, 2018, 11:44:04 AM4/12/18
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His site points out that the light is very dim.

Hard to believe the LED has come from that to today, where a single LED can literally blind you.

jf...@my-deja.com

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Apr 12, 2018, 12:04:05 PM4/12/18
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Early LEDs were not bright enough to be seen in broad daylight.  That was one of the advantages of numitrons.

AnubisTTP

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Apr 12, 2018, 2:22:07 PM4/12/18
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These LEDs are very dim...they can be seen as a dot of light from about 2 feet away in a normal indoor room, but sunlight renders them completely invisible. The only time I have ever seen them used in a piece of equipment was in a teletype tester as a panel indicator; the operator would have to flip up a cover to view the LEDs. Nobody is going to be building a 1000 lumen flashlight from these!

gregebert

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Apr 12, 2018, 3:29:49 PM4/12/18
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It is an interesting piece of history, because the LED marks the beginning-of-the-end for nixie tubes.

Happy birthday, LED. 50 years old now.........

Terry Kennedy

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Apr 12, 2018, 4:29:31 PM4/12/18
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On Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 7:51:31 AM UTC-4, AnubisTTP wrote:
I am not sure if this is offtopic or not, if so, mods please remove. I have recently come into possession of a small quantity of Monsanto MV1 LEDs... the MV1 is the first commercially produced LED, released in 1968.

Do you know what the list price for this was back in 1968? Your MV2 article says "a new MV2 was approximately $265 dollars in 1969". Was that expressed in 1969 dollars, or in current dollars? If in 1969 dollars, that was a HUGE sum - for the more youthful people here, you could buy any one of a number of number of brand new mid-range cars (and even some sports cars like the Opel GT were in that range) for the low $3000's, and a VW Beetle was only $1699.

How much of the production was hand assembly (you show several production failures in your article)? Do you know if they ever automated the line any further? I worked at a factory in the mid-1970's that produced bases for crystal cans, and that was all done by hand although the leads were purchased as pre-forms. One of the factory's biggest sellers was the base for the Motorola 3.58MHz crystal that was used in many television sets.

Moving back on-topic, are the ones you have for sale loose pieces, in the original clamshell, or in the later plastic bag?

Jeff Walton

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Apr 12, 2018, 5:00:49 PM4/12/18
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I actually used one of the MV1 LEDs in a clock in ~1970.  It was purchased as a surplus item from a magazine ad for Poly Packs.  My recollection was that it was "seconds" and about $5-6 each.  They were really dim but looked just like the article photos.  I used it to rectify the low voltage prior to wave shaping into a gate for the 60Hz time base.  There was no useful purpose for using it other than to have a real LED in my perfboard nixie clock.  After a few years it was so dim that it took a darkened room to see the glow but continued to provide the diode function for many years.  Not a very good LED but worked as advertised.

Clock used CK8754 nixies and real TI 74141 driver chips. 


Jeff 
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AnubisTTP

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Apr 13, 2018, 9:24:47 AM4/13/18
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Yes, that $265 price is in 1969 dollars, the MV2 was insanely expensive when it was released. The MV2 was not really usable as an indicator though... it can only be seen in a darkened room. The only evidence I have ever found of them being used was in scientific experiments in the late 1960s. I have not been able to pin down a good price for what MV1s sold for in single quantities, but a 1968 price list I read listed them at $18 dollars each in quantites of 1000. It is my understanding that most of the assembly for these was done by hand... I have read accounts that say the dies were placed in the LEDs manually with a pair of tweezers.

The ones I am selling are not in the original packaging, they were found in a plastic sack with the word "MV1" written on it in marker. I also checked them under a microscope and they have the same die and internal construction as an MV1 I have that was still in it's original Monsanto packaging.

Instrument Resources of America

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Apr 13, 2018, 11:06:20 AM4/13/18
to 'AnubisTTP' via neonixie-l

"insanely expensive" YES! That is true of any and all new technologies that I can think of. It wasn't that long ago that small flat screen, hang on the wall, televisions were several thousands of dollars. Now they are available NIB for under three hundred bucks.  The really large sets keep coming down in price as well. And the quality keeps getting better as well.      Ira

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jb-electronics

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Apr 13, 2018, 11:27:35 AM4/13/18
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Is there a datasheet for this LED? I am really interested in the current draw. (The voltage is fixed, more or less, by the wavelength. So the current will tell us something about the efficiency.) Jens

jf...@my-deja.com

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Apr 13, 2018, 11:44:29 AM4/13/18
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On Friday, April 13, 2018 at 8:27:35 AM UTC-7, Jens Boos wrote:
Is there a datasheet for this LED? I am really interested in the current draw. (The voltage is fixed, more or less, by the wavelength. So the current will tell us something about the efficiency.) Jens
Google "GaAs LED  efficiency".  According to https://www.ele.uva.es/~pedro/optoele/LEDs/Bright_LEDs.pdf , before 1973 the efficiency was  under 1% or under 0.2%, depending on the chemistry.

Terry S

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Apr 13, 2018, 12:10:06 PM4/13/18
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On Friday, April 13, 2018 at 10:06:20 AM UTC-5, I wrote:

"insanely expensive" YES! That is true of any and all new technologies that I can think of. It wasn't that long ago that small flat screen, hang on the wall, televisions were several thousands of dollars. Now they are available NIB for under three hundred bucks.  The really large sets keep coming down in price as well. And the quality keeps getting better as well.      Ira



Yes and no. It's still possible to buy a really crappy LCD tv. I own one.  

Nick

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Apr 13, 2018, 12:21:42 PM4/13/18
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On Friday, 13 April 2018 20:10:06 UTC+4, Terry S wrote:
>
> Yes and no. It's still possible to buy a really crappy LCD tv. I own one.

:)

Nick

gregebert

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Apr 13, 2018, 12:41:17 PM4/13/18
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I wonder if someday in the distant future, the google group "neoled" will be full of stories about 7-segment LED displays selling for hundreds of dollars each on Ebay.....and even-more-expensive steampunk LED clocks.

Instrument Resources of America

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Apr 13, 2018, 5:54:29 PM4/13/18
to 'jfeng@my-deja.com' via neonixie-l

With that kind of terrible efficiency, and the horrendous cost, what exactly did engineers see in these things, at that time??  Ira.

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Jeff Walton

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Apr 13, 2018, 6:37:55 PM4/13/18
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Potential. 



Jeff
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