Solid State Lighting a Modern Revolution

Joint Meeting with the Society for Information Display

Optikos will have optical toys on display for this meeting. Please feel free to your own toys to share with the audience.

Solid-state lighting is leading a transformation of the lighting industry from incandescent and fluorescent light sources to LEDs.  This transformation has brought about a whole new way of thinking that changes not only how we design lighting products, but also how and where we use those products.  For example, engineers are now thinking about chromaticity and color rendering.  They are inventing new ways to shape the distribution of the light to achieve lighting and illumination effects that were not possible in the past.  Lighting designers are using LED products to change rooms, buildings, and landmarks into colorful and dynamic expressions of creativity.  While lighting of past ages was static and functional, new LED technologies have made lighting products a means to transform an environment with colorful and dynamic effects.

This is a two-part presentation concerning LED lighting.  The first part is a scientific look at different ways of measuring color differences using MacAdam ellipses, the "uniform" color space u'v', and Delta E.  In the second part of the presentation we will see examples of LED lighting systems that create unique lighting effects from rooms to bridges to buildings all around the world.

Over the years, I have been involved in a wide variety of activities ranging from product development programs, government project review panels, intellectual property disputes, and commercial business transactions. As I reviewed these activities it seemed that they had the feel of doing battle - with technology, with expectations, with the possible and the impossible, and yes, sometimes even with people. In my talk, I am going to share with you several of the more interesting optical conflicts ranging from battles fought in the vast realms of toys and consumer products, to the legendary rear guard action of the Hubble fix, and to the bitter sparring of patent fights. From each of them I shall distill the lessons learned; some were predictable, most were unexpected; some were disappointing and others quite funny, in hindsight.

Precision Interferometric Measurements In Non-ideal Environments

Precision optical components are essential for modern optics/photonics systems.  Modern electronics, computers, and software have made it possible to greatly improve the fabrication and testing of optical components and optical systems and the resulting improvements in the new optical instruments and devices we use are evident.  Once the data obtained testing an optical system is in the computer it is possible to do sophisticated computer analysis to determine what is wrong with the optical system and what needs to be done to correct the system, and how well the system will perform if it is not improved.  It is now practical to test optical systems much better than the reference optics used in the optical test setup.  Until recently, a major limitation of interferometry for precision metrology was the sensitivity to the environment.  In recent years many techniques for performing high quality interferometric measurements in non-ideal environments have been developed and new techniques are being introduced all the time.  This talk discusses some of the different techniques for reducing the effects of vibration and atmospheric turbulence on interferometric measurements.  The application of these techniques for the measurement of surface vibration, the testing of optical components including large astronomical optics, and the measurement of deformations of diffuse structures will be described.