Blinded By The Light
I’ve been obsessed with LED technology, and lighting in general for at least two decades. Part of it I blamed to having the Hebrew word for light as part of my name. Part of it is just the fact that light is mesmerizing.
I also had a bad habit of keeping the lights on out of fear. First, I kept a light on in my room throughout my childhood and teens (it probably had some bad physical effect) and then I would keep them on in a hallway, bathroom, etc. My father would run after me but nothing seemed to change my behavior. Een the infrared sensor in the bathroom would be thwarted. When I observed Shabbat, I’d also flick this to the On position and leave the lights for 25 hours straight, or even longer if there were other religious holidays.
Being a geek, I loved getting a fresh copy of Popular Science from about the mid to late 1990s. I remember the developed of new blue lasers for DVD and the price of LEDs also started to drop. I remember reading about blue LEDs and eventually white ones. Finally, in the early 2000s, the first screw in LED light bulbs came to the market.
I remember ordering one on eBay and thinking that it would be the salvation to all my problems. I could leave the light on all I wanted to because it would cost $1 / year per bulb to produce light. Then I installed it…
It was a faint glow. Sure, you could see objects in the room but you had to squint. It was definitely not a 60W equivalent… more like 12W and still consumed 5W. Compact fluorescent seemed to do a better job.
Fast forward to today and LED lights are many times brighter per watt, likely tripling over two decades. Lighting is a fraction of the energy consumption it once was and new options in colors and placement are coming about.
Looking ahead, we’ll likely see new form factors like the Nanoleaf take off.
