'Throwies' before they were famous...

IIRC, 'Throwies', an LED taped to a 3V lithium coin-cell and magnet, went viral around 2006.

Can any-one remember when it was noticed that a hi-brightness LED and a 3V coin cell went together like 'bacon & egg' ??

I'm trying to find if this 'LED + cell' pairing was in 'public domain' in mid-1998, or would a 'hobbyist' LED user follow the formal 'subtract forward voltage from cell voltage, set current with Ohm's Law and dropper resistor' Engineering approach...

I'm happy either way, I just don't want to bend the time-line too much...

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Background: Story I'm writing incidentally features an adolescent dance troupe, plus young hobbyist who makes some illuminated props for them.

Lad has UK 'Maplin Catalogue', so HeathKit / Radio Shack level rather than 'RS Industrial'. Has some dial-up internet access. Has 'Art of Electronics' plus 'Elektor', 'Maplin' and 'Practical Electronics' subscriptions etc etc...

Fortunately, I have the Maplin CD catalogue from Autumn 1998. Never tried it before this project came up, but the disk was a cover-mount in a part-box of old magazines. I soon understood why the experiment was unpopular...

Our legacy XP laptop lacked enough resource to run the proprietary database engine, while Windows 8 refused to touch the 16-bit code. Due patents, lawyers etc, the database format cannot be read by Office / Open Office. Worse, those old database files are not compatible with current versions of that engine...

Moral of story: 'future proof' should mean more than one (1) generation...

Eventually, I got it running on a pre-owned office XP_Pro PC.

Although browsing is nigh impossible, and printing product info is non-trivial, I *can* check a specific part.

RED LED's on a wristwatch and calculators begain in the early 70's when we were using sliderules.

I recall effective illumination it took the emergence of HB LEDs which instead of GaAs or GaP used combinations of dopants such AlInGaAs in addition to transparent substrates so the bottom emissions would be reflected back out the front.

I think the time when an engineer realized the ESR of the coin cell effectively limited the current of 3V cell on a 2V LED is when this became popular. For me it was the early 80's, but I dont know when it became popular.

**broken link removed**

HP and Stanley were leaders in America of these parts during the early 80's