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teleforcetoday at 3:56 AM5 repliesview on HN

>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 only 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:

https://youtu.be/AF8d72mA41M


Replies

ta9000today at 6:15 AM

Does that mean when we run out of Ga there are no more LED TVs?

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asahtoday at 1:48 PM

> The pervasive high rise buildings did not happen before the invention of modern cranes.

yyy! if we're going to wander off-topic :-) then I should mention elevators, water pumps, fire suppression including fire truck ladders and more! :-)

mcbishoptoday at 4:15 AM

I've heard the EV charging has played a big role in the maturation of GaN / SiC.

show 1 reply
da02today at 10:24 AM

What are some novel processes or technologies you see becoming more important in the next 5-10 years?