In 1960 Dr. Nick Holonyak was working a material called GaAsP, which was a way to widen bandgap tunnel diodes. Then in 1962 an infa-red GaAs semiconductor laser was shown off by a fellow GE employe Dr. Robert Hall, Holonyak knew he was in a position to create a visible laser. With advice from Dr. Robert Hall, Holonyak was able to create a visible laser later on that year.
LED lighting has come along way since then, and you now find them everywhere in shops, banks, cars, restaurants, train stations, trains, buses, etc.
Now that LED lighting is at an affordable cost many businesses have opted to install them in their place of work. This is because they are very easy to install, they cost less to run and have a much longer life cycle than the standard bulb. They are also much brighter and can come in a range of different colours (white, warm white, red, blue, green, etc) and also colour changing.
The LED’s work well for shop displays because they can be neatly installed away due to them being on a tape which can be stuck down and around the display so that it doesn’t interfere with the actual display. If you were using a colour changing LED tape (RGB) then you could set the LED’s to a program and have them changing colour or chasing around the display.