Now-Ubiquitous LED Lights Invented 50 Years Ago ROBERT SIEGEL,
HOST: They are ubiquitous. They're in our cars, our computers,
our TVs and the remotes that control them. They light up our
streets and, increasingly, our homes. I'm talking about Light
Emitting Diodes, better known as LEDs. It was 50 years ago this
week that they were invented. NICK HOLONYAK: In a way, I knew
right away from how powerful this result was that we were in the
right direction. SIEGEL: That is Nick Holonyak, Junior, the
father of the LED. In 1962, Holonyak was working in General
Electric's semiconductor lab. And he was working on an alloy to
produce visible light. His colleagues were skeptical. HOLONYAK:
They're sophisticated and they got good methods and all that,
and here comes this punk electrical engineer who's fooling
around with some simple screwy kind of ideas. And they're
swearing at me with their nice New York street language and I'm
giving it back to them... HOLONYAK: ...in coal miner's and then,
of course, I can even switch