LED is short for “light emitting diode.” The light emitting part of the name is easy enough to understand. However, the diode part is less so for many non-technical people. A diode is a solid state device that allows electric current to flow in one direction only. Diodes are used in electronics, and exceedingly small diode elements are present within the integrated electronics used in computers. In any case, an LED is a diode that lights up when electricity flows through it.

Before solid state devices such as diodes and transistors were invented, radios and even computers were made from glowing glass tubes called vacuum tubes. These put out lots of waste heat and didn’t last long. Thanks to solid state devices, commercial electronics and especially computers advanced rapidly. They got smaller, became more powerful, and consumed less energy. Today, the only vacuum tube based computers are found in museums.

Oddly enough, the lighting industry took much longer to make commercial use of solid state LEDs. It’s also odd that we still use vacuum tube based lighting, otherwise known as incandescent lights. An incandescent light is just a glowing filament placed inside a vacuum tube. Like the vacuum tubes used in the old 1950s computers, incandescent lights put out tremendous waste heat.

In fact, about 90% of the electricity that powers an incandescent bulb turns into heat. The old vacuum tube computers required constant maintenance to replace vacuum tubes that were always burning out. Likewise, incandescent light bulbs require a fair amount of maintenance compared to LED lighting.

In some ways, fluorescent lighting is an improvement over the incandescent bulb. But it too, is just glass tube technology that uses a gas as its “filament.” It’s just as bulky and fragile as incandescent lighting and puts out more waste heat than LEDs. Why didn’t glass tube based lighting die off like the vacuum tube based computers and electronics? Because glass tube lighting does its job well enough, provided you have plenty of energy to waste.

Today, many business owners are learning first hand about the cost savings in reduced energy use and reduced maintenance requirements of LED lighting. They have chosen to leave the old glass tube, 20th century dinosaur technology behind.