Christmas lights are a uniquely American tradition. That’s not just because the first electric Christmas lights appeared in America. The tradition embodies a certain American-ness, an ingenuity and hunger for innovation, that’s easily overlooked. America doesn’t just make things. America makes things spectacular.
Cities beefing up their smart infrastructure have tapped the ubiquitous streetlamp to track traffic data and measure pollution. Now, in Los Angeles, some streetlights will help keep the communications network intact after an emergency.
Wifi networks aren’t ubiquitous yet, and other wireless communication protocols like Bluetooth can suck battery life. So researchers at Disney have come up with an alternative way for devices to talk to each other using LEDs blinking faster than the human eye can see.
Last year, Surefire released an innovative new line of “WristLights.” But, at $800, they were way too expensive for most people. This new 2211X costs just $170 and is just as bright. How’s it work?
The coolest water slide in the world and perhaps the universe is this black hole water slide in Bremerhaven, Germany’s Bad 1 Water Park. The slide starts off completely dark and then lights up with colorful LEDs throughout the journey that make it seem as if you’re traveling through some trippy wormhole or…
As David Bowie well knows, sound and vision are a wonderful pairing. Now, Sony is following in his footsteps: its latest LED bulb is also a Bluetooth speaker.
At this point, there are tons of apps that let us know when our trains are running late. But apps aren’t nearly as pretty as an LED light strip set up to blink when something’s wrong with your commute.
The MMU-X3R is FourSevens’ brightest handheld flashlight yet. At 2,000 lumens, it’s brighter than my car’s high beams and is small enough to fit into the palm of my hand. But, is it the right light for you?
Los Angeles recently converted 140,000 of its street lights to energy-efficient LEDs—the largest such upgrade in the world. Now a new partnership with lighting giant Philips will allow the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting to wirelessly manage all those street lamps, similar to the way its Hue system allows you to…
I have seen the future of high definition displays and lo, it is glorious. Not to mention rollable, foldable, and clearly superior to LCD/LED—really every other panel technology available today.
If you're buying an LED lightbulb, you often have to pick between splurging on a fancy one or saving money by buying whatever's cheapest. Cree's original LED bulb is one of the rare LED lightbulbs that works well and costs next-to-nothing, and now the company is offering an even cheaper version.
The 2014 Nobel Prize for physics went to the inventors of the blue LED. Read on for context on why that's a prize-worthy discovery, and check out this technical article in Physics Today if you want to dive deeper into the physics.
Congratulations goes out to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura. Some 20 years ago, they invented the blue light-emitting diode, an energy-efficient and environmentally efficient light source with revolutionary implications.
It's the Star Trek-inspired future we were promised—walls that glow and change color, perhaps with just a gentle voice command. And it's finally (almost) possible thanks to a series of advances in OLED sheets. This new lighting solution also uses half as much energy than existing fluorescent lights. It is, however,…
There's pretty good chance you have a piece of this year's physics Nobel prize-winning invention in your pocket. The blue light-emitting diode (LED) is found in the screens of millions of phones as well as our bright, new energy-efficient LED lightbulbs. Today, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the three…
The most advanced LED screens look amazing compared to what was on the market even a couple of years ago. But a Princeton engineer found a cheap new way of making LEDs not only brighter and more efficient, but also five times as clear. It even makes them last longer.
In the coming LED revolution, lightbulbs will no longer have to be lightbulbs. LEDs, which are just little points of light, can be arranged into any shape you want, and the Swiss design firm Shibui has decided place them in a simple, straight line. Meet Linelight.
Despite predictions to the contrary, we have yet to experience any kind of global rapture here on earth. Should believers ever get beamed up to the heavens, I kind of imagine it would be in the kind of illuminated vortices created and snapped by British photographer Martin Kimbell.
