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The First Big LED Displays! 1975 Dialco 7-Segment

I have never encountered anything like this so early.  In the  incandescent, VFD, and Panaplex era of large bright displays this  upstart module is using bright light emitting diodes?  And they're not  microscopic?  Yes!  A real rare find, and I go all-in to get this  running and demo it for you.  Enjoy!

The First Big LED Displays!  1975 Dialco 7-Segment

Comments

These LED's would have been very expensive, so definitely would not have been cheap.

Fran Blanche

Who knows... I'd like to find out who they sourced them from.

Fran Blanche

My thought as to why they bothered to use LEDs rather than incandescent for this is less heat generated and possibly longer life too. But this is far from my area of expertise. So I'll probably get shot down here.

Dr Andy Hill

Wonder if the LED chemistry is early gallium nitride

William

Wow! Feels a good 5 years ahead of its time, excellent find Fran! 👍

Zygmunt Dean

amazing

Fred Niell

Early LEDs were very dim, though - I remember using some that were OK for panel indicators but finding some bright enough for this job must have been a challenge. Maybe not possible until large green leds appeared (and reds were brighter by then). I did mostly use 0.1" LEDs and I wonder if 0.2" were brighter. Probably just the same die with a bigger lens though.

adrian

Any kind of display themed video always gets my vote.

David Peaker

I'm not surprised. The standard 7seg LED could perfectly evolve from a lightguide incandescent, only replacing bulbs with diodes available back then. Miniaturization would have come later.

Keri Szafir

It amazed me that this technology was ramping up in the mid 70's.

-Jeff-


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