Innovative technologies

There is no strict definition of innovation in technology, just like in any other field of technology. Intuition suggests that the concept of innovation may be associated with the evolutionary finding of new solutions to old problems, or the discovery of completely new areas of activity in which there are no established solutions yet, so each new solution may (but does not have to) lead to breakthrough discoveries.

The latter approach is both the most promising and the riskiest, because you never know whether the years of work devoted to working on a pioneering solution will lead to useful results.

Let's try to evaluate technological innovations from a historical perspective using the example of lighting technology. The attached table presents an overview of light sources used in technology from the oldest to the newest. When comparing, we take into account three important parameters of light sources: energy efficiency, which determines what percentage of the energy consumed is converted into visible light, durability and color rendering ability, i.e. the degree of similarity to sunlight.

Each of the artificial light sources that appeared in technology was a great technological innovation in its time. However, the development was not linear at all, some parameters improved, others were sacrificed to improve efficiency.

The first great technological innovation was the candle, providing light with a stable value and ease of use that surpassed previous sources such as torches or oil lamps. Note that the candle already provided quite decent color rendering, although the efficiency and durability of the candle were poor from today's point of view.

Further innovations appeared only in the 19th century: kerosene and gas lighting. The efficiency increased 5 times, and the increase in durability was impressive: gas lighting installations have been preserved, operating to this day, although their use is now museum-like.

The greatest innovation in lighting technology was Edison's invention, paid for with a lot of hard work: the electric light bulb, which dominated lighting in the world for a hundred years. The efficiency of light bulbs has exceeded the magic barrier of 1%. In terms of color rendering ability, light bulbs are still unbeatable. Unfortunately, there has been a regression in durability: commercially available light bulbs rarely survive more than 2,000 hours of use, and switching them on is fatal. If we could afford to work without turning it off, the life of the light bulbs would be much longer: the light bulb at the Livermore fire station has been on for over 100 years without interruption.

Further innovations in lighting appeared in the second half of the 20th century, including gas discharge lamps of various types, the most successful being the fluorescent lamp, which dominated lighting for the next forty years.

Let us note that the fluorescent lamp was superior to the incandescent lamp only in one parameter: the efficiency of the fluorescent lamp is 10 times higher than the efficiency of the incandescent lamp, the remaining parameters are not impressive: the color rendering is worse, and the increase in average durability is only several times higher.

A characteristic example of a dead end in innovation is the sodium discharge lamp: its efficiency is three times better than that of an ordinary fluorescent lamp, but another important parameter - color rendering - has deteriorated catastrophically: the sodium lamp glows yellow and the colors in its light cannot be distinguished.

At the end of the 1960s, another innovation appeared, the use of which at first had nothing to do with lighting. The first light-emitting diodes had an efficiency of less than 0.1%, glowed with red light and lasted several hundred hours. The price of LEDs at that time was so high that their only application could be calculator displays.

After 30 years of work with LED technology, we have artificial lights at our disposal, which has a chance to become an innovation as great as the candle and later the light bulb. White light LEDs available today are better than previously available light sources in all important parameters: efficiency has exceeded 20% and is quickly approaching the theoretical limit of 44%, color rendering is excellent and durability is approaching 100,000 hours. It can be assumed that parameters close to the theoretical limits will be achieved in the not too distant future.

As can be seen from the examples presented, the development of lighting to date has been more evolutionary than revolutionary. Innovations took the form of gradual improvement of individual parameters, with each subsequent generation of lighting being able to improve parameters to a lesser extent.

Does this mean that the time is approaching for some revolutionary innovation that will open completely new perspectives?