Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

>It is absolutely stupid to talk about this as edisons revenge. If Tesla had the modern high power transistors needed to get high voltage dc out of the ac produced from a spinning turbine he would be all for high voltage dc too. This! The soon people realized these facts the better. The pervasive high rise buildings did not happen before the invention of modern cranes. Exactly twenty years ago I was doing a novel research on GaN characterization, and my supervisors made a lot money with consulations around the world, and succesfully founded govt funded start-up company around the technology. Together with SiC, these are the two game changing power devices with wideband semiconductor technology that only maturing recently. Heck, even the Nobel price winning blue LED discovery was made feasible by GaN. Watch the excellent video made by Veritasium for this back story [1]. [1] Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED: ▶ this video

The guy who figured out how to make a blue LED (which was world changing), also worked every single day . Fascinating story: ▶ this video

I (and my 6-year-old) really enjoyed this video from Veritasium about the invention of the blue LED. ▶ this video

The human race has benefited greatly from individual researchers who made their work the main source of value in their life, and from societies, patrons, and government institutions who gave these people the stability and financial support to pursue such a single minded focus. Two fascinating examples: link ▶ this video

And you can thank this guy for the LEDs that made it possible for you to even read about it on a screen ▶ this video

I doubt you can attribute Shuji Nakamura's success entirely to the "Japanese model". ▶ this video The man was a genius, and his success is mostly his alone.

Is this true? What were the revenues of lighting companies before compared to now? Do we count TV screen makers because they’re LEDs as well? I just watched Veritasium’s video on how LEDs were indented and the companies making LEDs saw exponential increase in revenue. ▶ this video Basic Google search tells me the lighting industry has experienced high growth due to the invention of LED lighting.

I think that this is a general trend. Various fields tend to get into groupthink, and it is hard for people who buck the trend to pursue the usual academic path to research. But usually the herd has gone down a wrong turn, and it is up to a random rebel to make the next key discovery. For an extreme example, I recommend Veratasium's video on blue LEDs, ▶ this video . But despite how extreme that example is, it does seem to be a trend. The direction that the herd has gone has been generally well-explored simply because a herd of researchers have already gone there. If they've found nothing, you'll probably find nothing either. So you have to back up. Sadly, the way that academia is structured discourages this at every turn. :-(

And we only have blue LEDs due to the sheer stubbornness of Shuji Nakamura. If you haven't already heard the tale of its development, head over here and enjoy: ▶ this video

And yet there are stories of people ignoring the company direction, continuing work, and saving the company. See: The Blue LED ▶ this video So it’s not clear that the company knows better. Feels like educated guesses but a lof of luck involved.

In real life, the inventor of the blue led was basically scammed by his company. The company earned a lot of money and basically shifted the whole business to produce blue leds. Veritasium recently made a video about that ▶ this video I think this illustrate another point: patents should protect inventors, not companies. Companies shouldn't be able to amass a "portfolio" of patents to bully their competition either.

I suggest you watch this video as well, is goes into great detail on what it took to make the blue LED. It's quite fascinating. ▶ this video

Veritasium had this video about the history of sewing machines recently [1]. I remember watching it and ended up in awe of how something that we take for granted took a journey of several thousand years to be get invented. While I'm thinking about it, his recent video about the development of blue LEDs [2] is very interesting as well if you haven't seen it. [1] link [2] ▶ this video

What about the more recent invention of blue pigment LED? ▶ this video I found this story facing regarding the inventors determination

The Veritasium youtube channel has a few interesting videos related to this topic: This one is on IQ: link Pay attention to the stats on how IQ correlates to success (near the end). This one is about becoming an expert: link This one is about someone who just worked harder than everyone else: ▶ this video