Like computer technology, which started out very big and has been designed and engineered to be very small and fast, LEDs started out a bit unwieldly and are now smaller, more modular and brighter. Read on to find out the evolution of the LED!
LEDs were first developed in the late 1960s. They were difficult and expensive to manufacture. Very early LEDs gave off only infrared light, which is invisible to the naked eye.1
Soon after, visible light LEDs were introduced in red only.2 And, roughly 20 years ago, LED colors were expanded to include green, amber and yellow.2Recent innovations have added white and blue to the list of available colors – making LEDs more likely to have the color combination your department or agency requires.
You may have noticed that different LED colors are less expensive than others. Simply put, it’s all supply and demand, which especially effects fairly new technology. Red and even amber are LEDs that are used quite a bit for many different applications … traffic lights, vehicles and the like. Companies produce a lot more of them. So the production efficiencies allow for a less expensive LED. That’s also why you cannot find purple LEDs – the demand for them is just not high enough.
Besides adding a variety of color choices to LEDs, manufacturers have also made several leaps in the intensity of the quality of light. LEDs are extraordinarily bright, requiring very little power to operate.
Because LEDs require little electricity, are very dependable and extremely long-lasting, they are a logical choice for vehicle warning lights. However, because earlier models of warning light LEDs had small 5mm LEDs and were not extremely bright, they did not have practical applications for public safety professionals immediately.
So, in the late 1990s, LumiLeds, a semiconductor company located in Silicon Valley (a large area of California where many tech companies are located), introduced their revolutionary Level I LEDs. LumiLeds Level I LEDs were larger and had a far higher light output than earlier LEDs. Because of this, they could be used by public safety professionals.
Luckily, LumiLeds is always pushing the technological envelope. They developed Gen 2 LEDs in the early 2000s. They improved their LEDs to create Level II diodes. This new generation of super-bright, super-efficient LEDs are larger, extremely durable, are even more intense than Level I LEDs and have a pure color. Level IIs offer superior design flexibility because they are brighter and modular.
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| The latest LEDs are extremely bright and come in a number of color combinations that are perfect for public safety vehicles |
