Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

I (and my 6-year-old) really enjoyed this video from Veritasium about the invention of the blue LED. [VIDEO]

>It is absolutely stupid to talk about this as edisons revenge. If Tesla had the modern high power transistors needed to get high voltage dc out of the ac produced from a spinning turbine he would be all for high voltage dc too. This! The soon people realized these facts the better. The pervasive high rise buildings did not happen before the invention of modern cranes. Exactly twenty years ago I was doing a novel research on GaN characterization, and my supervisors made a lot money with consulations around the world, and succesfully founded govt funded start-up company around the technology. Together with SiC, these are the two game changing power devices with wideband semiconductor technology that only maturing recently. Heck, even the Nobel price winning blue LED discovery was made feasible by GaN. Watch the excellent video made by Veritasium for this back story [1]. [1] Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED: [VIDEO]

The Veritasium youtube channel has a few interesting videos related to this topic: This one is on IQ: [LINK] Pay attention to the stats on how IQ correlates to success (near the end). This one is about becoming an expert: [LINK] This one is about someone who just worked harder than everyone else: [VIDEO]

What about the more recent invention of blue pigment LED? [VIDEO] I found this story facing regarding the inventors determination

Veritasium had this video about the history of sewing machines recently [1]. I remember watching it and ended up in awe of how something that we take for granted took a journey of several thousand years to be get invented. While I'm thinking about it, his recent video about the development of blue LEDs [2] is very interesting as well if you haven't seen it. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

I suggest you watch this video as well, is goes into great detail on what it took to make the blue LED. It's quite fascinating. [VIDEO]

And we only have blue LEDs due to the sheer stubbornness of Shuji Nakamura. If you haven't already heard the tale of its development, head over here and enjoy: [VIDEO]

I think that this is a general trend. Various fields tend to get into groupthink, and it is hard for people who buck the trend to pursue the usual academic path to research. But usually the herd has gone down a wrong turn, and it is up to a random rebel to make the next key discovery. For an extreme example, I recommend Veratasium's video on blue LEDs, [VIDEO] . But despite how extreme that example is, it does seem to be a trend. The direction that the herd has gone has been generally well-explored simply because a herd of researchers have already gone there. If they've found nothing, you'll probably find nothing either. So you have to back up. Sadly, the way that academia is structured discourages this at every turn. :-(