Light-emitting diode light-emitting diode (U.S. Patent US3293513), the first practical LED. Immediately after filing the patent, Texas Instruments (TI) began a project to manufacture infrared diodes. In October 1962, TI announced the first commercial LED product (the SNX-100), which employed a pure GaAs crystal to emit a 890 nm light output. In October 1963, TI announced the first commercial hemispherical LED, the SNX-110. The first visible-spectrum (red) LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak, Jr. while working at General Electric. Holonyak first reported his LED in the journal "Applied Physics Letters" on December 1, 1962. M. George Craford, a former graduate
Light-emitting diode However, the appearance of objects illuminated by that light may vary as the spectrum varies; this is the issue of color rendition, quite separate from color temperature, where a really orange or cyan object could appear with the wrong color and much darker as the LED or phosphor does not emit the wavelength it reflects. The best color rendition CFL and LEDs use a mix of phosphors, resulting in less efficiency but better quality of light. Though incandescent halogen lamps have a more orange color temperature, they are still the best easily available artificial light sources in terms of color