As LEDs gain a greater portion of the lighting market, they are currently used in a variety of devices and applications ranging from traffic control devices (e.g. traffic lights, which include the single signal device that changes colors from green to yellow to red), barricade lights, hazard signs, message displays (e.g. Times Square, New York, commodities and news message boards, scoreboards), cellphones, televisions, large video screens used at sporting and other outdoor events (e.g. Miami Dolphins end-zone screen), calculators, digital clocks and watches, flashlights (including models for which 60 seconds of manual winding provides one-hour of light, eliminating the need to stockpile fresh batteries for emergencies), Christmas lights, airport runway lights, buoy lights, and automotive applications (e.g. indicator lights as well as head lights and signal lights in some vehicles; driver’s of the new 2006 Ford Mustang can even change the color (125 different varieties) of their “LED-laden dashboard by using the ‘MyColor’ feature”).
In fact the automotive industry plans to replace all bulbs with LEDs by 2010, while efforts are currently underway to replace all traffic signals with LED devices. At the same time, plans are in place to eventually use LEDs to light streets as well as much of the Third World and other areas “with no means of electricity” since “solar charged batteries” can power LEDs for the duration of each night.
In addition, “Phillips Electronics is developing remote-controlled LED room lighting [while] Boeing Corp. plans to use LED’s throughout the interior of its new 787 Dreamliner commercial jet.”
With the promise that LEDs hold, it is likely that someday they will provide illumination for houses and offices, X-Ray capabilities for the medical field, power computer monitors, as well as an assortment of other devices and applications. The possibilities are endless. However, before LEDs can supplant the traditional bulb, “designers and advocates of the technology must overcome… the usual obstacles to mainstream market adoption: Industry-accepted standards must be developed and costs must be reduced.”[16] Currently costs are coming down and some companies are moving towards these industry standards (e.g. Phillips Electronics is working on LED bulbs that can screw into existing light sockets, while besthomeledlighting.com already offers LED screwable bulbs -- one consisting of 70 LEDS that emits a "warm white color similar to the light from an incandescent bulb" using only 3 Watts of energy and another LED bulb that actually changes colors when lit). With these efforts along with the adoption, exploitation, and production of LED technology by growing numbers of companies, it is inevitable that LEDs will become the sole source of lighting rendering traditional incandescent and fluorescent bulbs extinct. In short, LEDs are the light of the future, a light that will benefit not only consumers but also industry and the Earth in general.
