this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED (youtu.be)
submitted 9 months ago by Whirling_Cloudburst@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.

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[–] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't get the dislikes, it is a great question. But as someone above, I think the cost was to dicover a way to make blue LED at all and make it scalable, then it's just like any other product.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks - and yeah I absolutely pre-suppose that much. I was just hoping for a more specific answer. There could be just as interesting of a story about how it went from prototype —> ubiquity. I personally don’t just wave that process off and say “meh economies of scale.” Production scaling is often quite innovative too. And many lab innovations die on the vine because they can’t cross this chasm. So the fact that this one could, after being such a holy grail for so long, is something I would love to understand more.