To really appreciate the wonder and beauty of LED technology, you need to visit the largest LED display in the world today, located in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada.  The Fremont Street Experience is a 5-block pedestrian mall encompassing the western end of Fremont Street in the oldest part of the city.  Covering this area is a huge LED display canopy, rising 90 feet in height at the peak, stretching over 1,500 feet (457 meters) in length, and held up by 16 columns weighing 26,000 pounds each.  This canopy is so huge that the world’s largest electric sign would only take up 1/50 of its size.

Light and sound shows are presented on the canopy periodically each evening after dusk.  Before the show begins, all outdoor casino lights are shut off and crossing streets are blocked to vehicle traffic.  Pedestrians gather in the mall and look up to watch the show on the canopy ceiling.  Several shows have been presented over the past few years, featuring famous Las Vegas icons, American patriotism, race car driving and alien invaders, among other topics.

When the Fremont Street Experience was created in 1994, the initial display contained 2.1 million incandescent light bulbs controlled by 32 computers.  It also featured a 350,000 watt sound system with speakers suspended over the pedestrian mall.  In 2004, $17 million was spent on upgrades, and the incandescent lights were replaced with a 12.5 million LED display, showcasing more color combinations than the original.  The whole project, now including a 550,000 watt sound system and 220 speakers, is managed through a central control room with 10 computers.

Central to the success of this massive light display is the use of individually mounted LEDs.  Red, green and blue diodes are combined to form full-color pixels that are spaced evenly apart and measured from center to center for absolute pixel resolution.  This worked great for still images, but further developments were necessary to display moving images that looked real and didn’t blur.
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