Brilliant!

Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology (Updated Edition) by Bob Johnstone, Prometheus Books, 2015. 

This book is mainly about a Japanese solid-state physicist Shuji Nakamura, but also gives a description of the work of his predecessors, and of applications of light-emitting diodes (LEDs).  

GE, Varian and Monsanto

In 1962 Nick Holonyak, Jr. made the first LED at General Electric. It was in the visible red part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In 1963, Herbert Kroemer thought up double heterostructure while at Varian Associates in Palo Alto. A double heterostructure is two materials with different band gaps, which makes the LED brighter. A “quantum well” is extremely thin double heterostructure. In 1972 M. George Craford, who was once a graduate student of Holonyak, invents the first yellow LED at Monsanto. 

RCA and Stanford University

At the RCA Material Research Laboratory in Princeton New Jersey, James J. Tietjen and his student Herbert Paul Maruska made gallium nitride blue LEDs in the late 1960s). Maruska went to Stanford University to work on a Ph.D. While there, he and fellow graduate student Walden C. Rhines developed gallium nitride LEDs doped with magnesium. In 1972 Jacques I. Pankove (Pantchechnikoff, an immigrant from Ukraine) made pale blue gallium nitride LED. He used gallium nitride films grown for him by Ed Miller. 

Akasaki and Amano

In 1989 Isamu Akasaki and his graduate student Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University made a p-n junction gallium nitride doped with magnesium in the absence of oxygen contaminant. In 1991 Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano made a double-heterostructure gallium nitride LED. 

Seiji Nakamura at Nichia

Seiji Nakamura was an engineer at Nichia Chemical Industries in Tokushima. Nichia Chemical Industries  was founded by Nobuo Ogawa. Eiji Ogawa was the son-in-law and successor of Nobuo Ogawa. In 1988 Nakamura spent a year at the University of Florida learning Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition from visiting expert Shiro Sakai, who was a professor at Tokoshima University and expert at MOCVD (Metal-Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition). In 1991, Seiji Nakamura developed thermal annealing, which is better than the electron beam method used at Nagoya. In 1992 Nakamura makes first bright blue LED. Nakamura figured out a way to stop the indium gallium nitride layer from disassociating. Nakamura modified MOCVD apparatus to have a second inlet for the reactant gasses (two-flow MOCVD). He used the original inlet for an inert gas to keep reactant gases pinned at the wafer surface. In 1993 Nakamura announces first bright blue LED to the world. In 1999 Nakamura moves from Nichia to University of California at Santa Barbara. 

Commercial Applications

The book has several chapters on applications of LEDs. There were commercial applications for LEDs before Nakamura's bright blue LEDs. For example, Cree Research, started by Bob Davis of North Caroline State, developed dim,  inexpensive blue LEDs using silicon carbide and gallium nitride.  They were used as indicator lights on consumer electronics and automobiles. A firm called Color Kinetics commercialized bright, blue LEDs for professional lighting, such as color-shifting theater marquee signs for heels, casinos and schools. Carmanah developed anchor lights for boat buoys, powered by solar cells. Customers were Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard. Cybrlux manufactured bright, blue LEDs for emergency lighting and jewelry display cases. The Light Up the World Foundation provides lights independent of the electrical grid for rural areas in South Asia. Ultraviolet black light LED applications include sterilization, germicide, covert communications, biosensors for detecting anthrax bacteria, curing polymers, dermatology, and protein fluorescence.