M. George Craford, a former graduate student of Holonyak, invented the first yellow LED and improved the brightness of red and red-orange LEDs by a factor of ten in 1972.
Prvo uporabno svetlečo diodo z vidno rdečo svetlobo je v letu 1962 razvil Nick Holonyak ml., ki je delal pri General Electric Company (Kolonyak 1962).