The record breaker

World class. On Time. Safely.

A world record for the largest image made from LED lights was set at Shurtan in southern Uzbekistan on the night of the 22nd/23rd July, 2012. The image was built across an area of approximately 750,000m² and contained 1,012,840 LED lights, smashing the previous record, which was set in Holland in 2010 and stood at 50,010 LED lights.

The light image was created as part of the naming ceremony for OLTIN YO'L GTL in order to visualise the scale of the project on-site. The idea was conceived on July 3rd and the entire project was completed in just under three weeks.

The project team included OLTIN YO'L GTL, TOShShAHARNUR, the Tashkent municipal lighting company which provided and installed the lights, and Malwell Corporate Projects, which has a long track record of managing GTL promotions, including the GTL Challenge and the Bryan Habana cheetah race.

The light picture took six days to build and needed twenty four kilometres of lighting as well as fourteen kilometres of power cables. It also needed 302 kilowatts of power which was drawn from three generators, a railway station and the Shurtan Gas and Chemicals Complex (SGCC). The SGCC also provided invaluable support and advice to the attempt. The team worked in temperatures of over 40˚C as well as winds of over 35 kmh and, despite the harsh physical conditions, the presence of large numbers of poisonous snakes and the multiple live power lines on-site, the whole attempt was successfully completed injury-free.

Record requirements

In addition to the standard requirements for formal witnessing of the attempt, each Guinness World Record has a set of specific requirements which must be met.

1. All of the LED lights must be turned on simultaneously for at least five seconds. If this does not happen, the attempt has failed. Two experienced timekeepers (e.g. from a local athletics club) must time the attempt with stopwatches accurate to 0.01 seconds.
2. The image must be recognizable to a suitable extent.
3. LED lights used must be commercially available.
4. LED lights must be anchored securely to the chosen surface before they are turned on.
5. The image is disqualified if all LED lights are not turned on simultaneously.
6. Two independent witness statements must count the LED lights used before they are turned on.