We all have LED bulbs at our houses, that luminous the whole room with its white light. Do you know the backstory of LED lights? A little curious to know? So keep reading, don’t know which point you may find interesting, though everything is. Do you know what a light-emitting diode is? It’s the full form of LED. For your information, LED is a semiconductor device. 


When the electrical current flows through this device, it releases visible lights. It will stun you to know if you are not a physics student, there is a device that does this process vice versa. It’s called a Photovoltaic cell, where visible lights are transformed into electric current. In layman terms, a diode is an electrical device comprising an anode and cathode (electrodes). 


Electricity passes through these electrodes, it enters through anode and exits through the cathode. Diodes are assembled from the special substances that conduct electricity under specific circumstances with no compromise. Now let’s discuss some facts regarding the LED lightings-


  • In the lightning industry LED is fastly speeding up and is also an energy-efficient technology. As compared to incandescent light bulbs LEDs produce electricity around 80-90% methodically. We can count the life of LED with the lumen depreciation, which means slowly dimming of the light emitted by the bulb. It’s one superiority over CFLs, LEDs don’t burn out, their brightness dim.


  • Thermal management contributed profoundly to LED management. LEDs produce heat and are consumed by the heat sinks, then release in the air. This management protected the LED from overheating or burning out. Just so you know that the temperature is inversely proportional to the life of LED. higher the temperature lower the life.


  • LED lightings are directional, unlike incandescent or CFL. meaning they discharge light and heat in every direction whereas LEDs efficiently use light in one direction only. To the LED to emit the light in every direction sophisticated engineering will be required (it’s not that easy).


  • Though LED emits white light, its colors are red, blue, green, and amber. Wondering then how there is white light? Well, there is this yellowish material called Phosphor material which changes the light color to white. Normal colored LEDs are useful in signal, and indicator lights.


After all the facts you would surely like to know more uses of LED than just being an LED bulb. Here we go-


  • LED technology can improvise the ceiling (home/office) with the look of clear sky virtually. As it has proved to improve working productivity.

  • LEDs use the solar energy to make LED car sunroofs, which completely prevents or adjusted, as per the occupants wish, lights entering the car.

  • LED light strips for bikes and cars look very luminous and are waterproof as well.

  • Modern wall painting is to digitalize the walls with LED wallpapers. You can also program the LED wallpaper to change its theme or shades.

  • Because of its power reduction characteristic, TV’s backlight calls for LED. The contrast is much better as compared to when CFLs and LCDs are fit.

  • LED in smartphone backlight leads to longer battery life because of its less output voltage.

  • LED use in the automotive industry is increasing day by day for the simple visibility option it facilitates.


LED lightings had not popped out in midair at midnight. It has a very interesting back story to it. So let’s look at the brief history of the light-emitting diode. Do you know what Electroluminescence is? In layman language, the lights produced electrically. LED light is surrounded by this very concept.


In 1936, George Destrian coined the term electroluminescence in a report published to explain the occurrence. Harry Joseph Round noticed this occurrence in Silicon Carbide in 1907. Again in 1920 zinc sulfide was experimented with copper to emit the light by Bernard Gudden and Robert Wichard Pohl. But all these lights were too faint for any practical experiment. Therefore, the experiments halted further.


In 1962 we got the ‘Father of the Light-Emitting Diode’. Nick Holonyak, Jr. invented the first LED emitting the red lights. At the time of invention, he was working with General Electric. Sometimes in history when LEDs were made on gallium arsenide substrate by utilizing gallium arsenide phosphide and orange lights were produced. Monsanto Company became the first company in history to do production on a large scale of the LED lights. 


In 1972 LED emitting yellow light was introduced to the mass by M. George Crawford by using red and green light. He also added extra credit to his name by inventing the LED that shines ten times brighter than the previous invention by the Father of the LED himself. As the decades passed by, more inventions and features were introduced to the LED lightings.

From today’s facts to yesterday’s history, almost everything is covered.