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An LED, or Light Emitting Diode, contains a chemical compound that gives off light when an electric current passes through it. They’ve been around for many years, but only recently has the technology advanced so that rather than just an ‘indicator’ light on your stereo amplifier or phone, they can be made bright enough to actually use as an independent light source.

LEDs put out a tremendous amount of light for their size and energy draw. They create almost no heat and use very little electricity. White LEDs were only developed in the past few years; before that they were only available in red, green, yellow and a few other colors. Best of all, an LED will last thousands of hours; some have been tested to over 50,000 hours (vs. a standard flashlight bulb that will only last a few hundred hours).

On a more technical basis, the centerpiece of a typical LED is a diode that is chip-mounted in a reflector cup and held in place by a mild steel lead frame connected to a pair of electrical wires. The entire arrangement is then  encapsulated in epoxy. The diode chip is generally about 0.25 mm square. When current flows across the junction of two different materials, light is produced from within the solid crystal chip. The composition of the materials determines the wavelength and color of light.

The shape, or width, of the emitted light beam is determined by a variety of factors: the shape of the reflector cup, the size of the LED chip, the shape of the epoxy lens and the distance between the LED chip and the epoxy lens.
We designed our LED for a fairly wide dispersion of light (rather than very focused). For this reason, if you look directly into our LEDs they might not appear as bright as ones that have a very narrowly focused beam (better for
headlamps and flashlights). If you look from the side, however, you will find they display much more light than a focused beam, and are thus better for a lantern application where you want light in a wider area.