Monday, February 15, 2016

LED Flashlights

A long time ago when I was very young I had one of those 101 electronics project kits.  I might have been a little too young at the time because I couldn't quite grasp the purpose of most of the components and made many mistakes.  One of those mistakes I made was something amazing that I couldn't grasp at the time.  It was the invention of the LED flashlight.

The LED wasn't a new thing, there were colored LED's on the kit and commonplace everywhere in electronics at the time. The purpose of the LED however was to be  a simple light to provide a visual cue that something was happening.  An on/off light if you will.  Very dim and not intended to provide actual illumination.

I was randomly hooking up components on my kit one day and accidentally hooked direct current through a common diode.  The overload caused an intense and blinding white light.  I tapped the connection a few times and was blown away by how bright it was.  Sadly I think I had pushed a full twelve volts through the diode and burned it out.  I thought I had ruined the kit and put it away regretfully.

It was many years later that the LED flashlight came out. A simple clear diode hooked to direct current.  The exact same setup I had accidentally created when I was a kid.  Now it's difficult to find a flashlight that isn't LED.  This technology has revolutionized the industry and if I had been a little more aware at the time I could have had the first patent on it.  Imagine that. 

So that's my story on how I once invented the LED flashlight but didn't know it.  The moral of this story is to never overlook the results of an accident.  Penicillin and Dove soap were both accidents.  I could have joined that group of accidental inventors.  

1 comment:

  1. Led Flashlight headlamps are a great line for various people out there. A simple head-mounted Led Flashlight will prove to be immensely useful for anyone that needs to focus on a task and needs both hands free to do so.

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