16 Feb 2006, 09:07
It sounds to me that he's asking if the actual quality of the LEDs themselves is better in the new or older modules. As much as I would like to believe otherwise, newer LEDs probably have much greater life expectancy. It becomes a matter of manufacturing technique, and by todays' standards, the methods of 1970s electronic manufacturing were almost unspeakably primitive, especially in an area that was very new [the commercial use of light emitting diodes was only a few years old in 1972, as was the CMOS circuitry used in the clock chips...I remember an RCA engineer telling me about an entire production run where not a single chip tested as good]. Production standards, even purity of raw materials, is under much tighter control now than thirty years ago, and it shows [I have Pulsars that show wide variations in display brightness which would never meet todays' standards of quality control]. Barring accident or abuse, todays LED watches have every chance of meeting the 100-year design lifetime that Pulsar aspired to. But despite their technological shortcomings, we still admire and respect them, because they were the first, and we tend to forgive pioneers their minor faults.
