• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    26 days ago

    It is amazing how much lighting has improved just during my lifetime, let alone since WWII. The best commonly available flashlight you could buy when I was a kid was a D cell maglight, with an incandescent bulb. Those were considered very bright back then. Compare one now to even a cheapo $5 LED flashlight from Walmart and there isn’t even a competition in lumens output. Sure, the maglight is still better made and has other features that make it nice, but the output from lights and their relative size has improved 1000% from when I was a kid. In my 20’s my friend had this massive pistol grip flashlight for off-roading that plugged into his cigarette lighter. The thing must have weighed 5 pounds. I have a little Rovyvon flashlight on my keychain now that weighs less than an ounce and it puts out more light than that pistol grip light did back then. Progress, baby!

    • ramble81English
      7·
      25 days ago

      LEDs really made that jump possible. Any other alternatives to incandescent were either bulky, fragile or power hungry.

      If you really want to see something cool, watch the history of how blue LEDs were invented which was the ultimate game changer.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        25 days ago

        Wow! That was beyond interesting, that was amazing. I even see a lot of parallels between Nakamura’s journey to becoming a full-fledged engineer, respected by his peers, and my journey towards becoming a full-fledged website engineer. It does take massive amounts of determination, creativity, and ignoring all of the nay sayers. Nakamura is an amazing person.

        The new CEO of Nichia sounds like a horrible person. Petty and vindictive, greedy, and entitled. Personifying the characteristics we often see from people born into wealth and position. Not only did he lack vision, creativity, and adventure, he actively tried to block all of the progress that Nakamura was making, and then stole all the money, and attempted to steal all the credit after Nakamura had his breakthroughs.

        I was so happy to hear that Nakamura won the Nobel prize. That at long last would have provided him with some financial compensation for all of his hard work and genius. I was also very happy to hear how widely published he is, and that he was able to retain all of the reputational credit for his accomplishments.

        I have a passing familiarity with LEDs because of my electronics tinkering hobbies, but I didn’t realize just how much material science, physics, and chemistry was involved in their invention and manufacturing. Thank you so much for sharing such an awesome video with me! I just shared it with my son and a few close friends who I know will enjoy it.