On 3/11/2009 4:54 PM Mike S wrote:

> At 07:15 PM 3/11/2009, Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote...
>> yeah.........duh.
>> if he would have said 'blue hi beam INDICTOR LED in the
>> dash'...........
>> that would have made good sense.
>> It's barely a 'bulb'  after all, unless we want to consider light
>> emitting
>> diodes as some form of bulb.
>
> No. It's an incandescent bulb, with a blue plastic filter on it. Blue
> LEDs weren't commercially available until CREE introduced them in late
> 1989, and even then, they were too expensive (over $10, AIR) to use as
> a dash indicator on a VW. He said "blue hi beam on bulb," which
> signifies an indicator.

I thought it was pretty clear, too. An LED is a light-emitting diode, not
a generic term for a little round bright thing that glows with a pretty
color. The tungsten filament bulbs used on the dash are most decidedly not
LEDs. They light bulbs. Menlo Park tech. When we tied onions on our belts.
Which was the style at the time.

I used them very early CREE pale blue bulbs in a product around '89.
Before that, there /were/ blue LEDs, from Tektronix (I think) which, near
as I can tell, were used for some kind of visual spectrum analyzer
calibration or some darn thing wanting accurate color or tightly-specified
wavelength. Those really cost a lot.

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
Bend, OR
KG6RCR