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Rampage_Rick t1_j12m5p2 wrote

Reply to comment by Earllad in TIL in 1962 a General Electric engineer named Nick Holonyak developed the first LED light bulb capable of emitting visible red light. The same bulb was used in the 1964 stop animation animated TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for Rudolph’s bioluminescent nose. by undergroundgeek

I doubt it was the first visible-wavelength LED, as that probably didn't put out enough light, and wasn't completely packaged either.

See photo on top-right of page 965: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/8A20CA7B75C337853C5328449851A663/S088376941200262Xa.pdf

Those first-gen production red LEDs sold for about $260 each

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Riegel_Haribo t1_j12olu6 wrote

Who invented that LED? GE. It was visible, from your article "Within months of the invention, General Electric was selling Holonyak’s red LEDs"

And was there any connection?

"...points out that the television special, bankrolled by GE for its General Electric Fantasy Hour, took about 18 months to complete and cost more than $500,000 to produce, an amount that would exceed $4.5 million today."

Rudolph could have had one of RCA's green LEDs - 1958. And RCA had blue in 1972.

Rudolph figure had "lost" its nose when it came to Antiques Roadshow in 2006, or maybe just resold in 1965?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0GaNTdZA8 - it then auctioned for $400000, (but that didn't keep some slimebag Christmas museum from keeping their $20000 gofundme donations to acquire it.)

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Seraph062 t1_j14f3te wrote

> Rudolph could have had one of RCA's green LEDs - 1958.

You're confusing things here: RCA had a patent for an infrared LED in 1958 (developed by Braunstein Rubin and Egon Loebner, and documented in US Patent 3102201). RCA also had a Green LED in the 70's (US Patent 3819974) but that was a different technology developed by a different group of people.

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