Em....try wiring 4 diodes in series when you meant to build a bridge, imagine connecting this "not bridge" to 120V.....the diodes were special order 1N4004.
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There was an extremely bright flash of light...similar to a xenon photo strobe.
I was momentarily blinded by the flash and deafened by the boom
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BTW I strongly suggest not duplicating my mistake. Besides wasting 4 perfectly good, and rare, diodes, if I hadn't been wearing glasses I might be blind from the tiny glass fragments.
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So no this does not count as normal electron-hole recombination to produce photons of light.
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I have no way to verify this but I suspect the extremely weak light produced by normal forward bias operation is in the IR spectra.
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Forward bias of normal, none LED, semiconductors did not emit enough light to be seen without a "nightscope,"?aka starlight scope, these are optical amplifiers with immense gain.?
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The original "LED" effect was found in Texas Instruments tunnel diodes with a IR microscope.
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I only have 6 working glass body GE tunnel diodes, they are rare enough that I was unwilling to test them as they are 60 years old and were rather delicate when new,
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I'm tempted to order some Soviet/Russian tunnel diodes from E-Flea and check them.
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The reverse bias photon emission was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, the effect was quite striking, go to the links I provided for interesting photographs.
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I've been given some early glass cased germanium transistors that have cases painted in black.
I'm hoping I can remove the paint without damaging the case. Anyway I think the cases are glass.
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