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Comment on Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

My favorite thing about widely-available blue LEDs was the effect on TV scifi.

Watch the Star Trek shows made in the 1980s and 1990s and the tricorders, alien gadgets, and other props were always twinkling with red, yellow, and green LEDs to look futuristic. A generation later and every single hand prop on 2000s Doctor Who, Torchwood, etc. glowed and twinkled blue because the LEDs had just become cheap enough for prop makers, but weren’t yet widespread enough in day-to-day life so that the viewers were seeing something strange and unusual.

One bit of tech turns up and suddenly glowy blue became the standard “scifi” color.

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aStonedSanta@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Purple still seems to be a tough one for most rgb devices I’ve used lol

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- filcuk@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They’re still rgb plus maybe yw using colour mixing, so depending on the quality, tuning, physics and our perceptionof light, not all colours are as nice or bright.
  
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  - aStonedSanta@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah. I just think being RgB it would be good at purple 😂
    
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    Alto@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It's called RGB because there's a red, green, and blue diode. Not sure how that's not a logical name.
    
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RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
9’s sonic screwdriver

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T156@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m not sure that LEDs were the thing that kicked off the trend. They made it easier to implement, but even in the 80s and 90s, you had things like Tron that might have kicked off the futuristic look with neon lines.

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