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The Centennial Light (100-Year Light Bulb) & Planned Obsolescence

O

oll_lewis

Gone But Not Forgotten
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A few years back when Fortean TV graced our screens there was one story on it about a bulb that had given 50 years of constant service and was still putting out...

This light bulb is thought to be 100 years old and it is claimed has been in near constant use all that time in this fire dept.

Old bulb cam
 
What is even more amazing than 100 year bulb is the fact that there is a web cam devoted to it.

And idiots like me who actually look in on it . . .

Sorry, Oll, I'm not disparaging you or your thread here! It is amazing. I wonder what's made it last so long? What will happen when it finally blows? Will the bean-counters at the fire dept accounts office allow them to buy a new one?

Carole
 
dunno but I want a bulb like that... :)
the bulbs in my house just blow after a few weeks.
 
I have a battery that's lasted for 14 years so far. :)
No! It's in a radio! :rolleyes:
Maybe I should point my webcam on the radio? Hehe
 
look at the size of the ..

filament (wire part that is heated) in modern bulbs their so tiny thin..so they burn out quicker(bust,break):eek!!!!:
 
Around here, the Town Council is offering 4 free energy saving bulbs to people on benefits.

An exercise in saving the planet, as well as a redistribution of wealth...

Hey, must remember to collect mine tomorrow!
 
Oll_Lewis said:
This light bulb is thought to be 100 years old and it is claimed has been in near constant use all that time in this fire dept.
Click to expand...

This is probably why it's lasted so long- bulbs are far more likely to blow when they're turned on or off- I presume it's the sudden heating or cooling stressing the filament.

I heard a rumour many years ago that light bulb manufacturers add sand to the metal used for filaments to make it more brittle, thus reducing their life, and increasing light bulb demand. Does anyone know if there's any truth in this?
 
I've only just heard of this, but considering how simple the tale I'm disproportionately interested in it:

Screen Shot 2018-01-28 at 13.17.30.png



The Centennial Light is the world's longest-lasting light bulb, burning since 1901. It is at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department. Due to its longevity, the bulb has been noted by The Guinness Book of World Records, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, and General Electric. It is often cited as evidence for the existence of planned obsolescence in later-produced light bulbs.

History
The Centennial Light was originally a 30-watt or 60-watt bulb but now is very dim, emitting about the same light as a 4-watt nightlight. The hand-blown, carbon-filament common light bulb was manufactured in Shelby, Ohio, by the Shelby Electric Company in the late 1890s; many just like it still exist and can be found functioning. According to Zylpha Bernal Beck, the bulb was donated to the Fire Department by her father, Dennis Bernal, in 1901. Bernal owned the Livermore Power and Water Company and donated the bulb to the fire station when he sold the company. That story has been supported by firefighter volunteers of that era.

Evidence suggests that the bulb has hung in at least four locations. It was originally hung in 1901 in a hose cart house on L Street, then moved to a garage in downtown Livermore used by the fire and police departments. When the fire department consolidated, it was moved again to a newly constructed City Hall that housed the unified departments.

Its unusual longevity was first noticed in 1972 by reporter Mike Dunstan. After weeks of interviewing people who had lived in Livermore all their lives, he wrote "Light Bulb May Be World's Oldest", published in the Tri-Valley Herald. Dunstan contacted the Guinness Book of World Records, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and General Electric, who all confirmed it as the longest-lasting bulb known in existence. The article came to the attention of Charles Kuralt of the CBS-TV program On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

In 1976, the fire department moved to Fire Station #6 with the bulb; the bulb socket's cord was severed for fear that unscrewing the bulb could damage it. It was deprived of electricity for only 22 minutes during the transfer, which was made in a specially designed box and with full firetruck escort. An electrician was on hand to install the bulb into the new fire station's emergency generator. Ripley's Believe It Or Notstated that the short delay would not mar the bulb's continuous burning record. In 2001, the bulb's 100th birthday was celebrated with a community barbecue and live music. Since that move, the bulb has run continuously for 41 years; previously it had only been off the grid for short periods of time (e.g. a week in 1937 for a renovation and the odd power outage).

On the evening of May 20, 2013, the general public witnessed, through a dedicated webcam, that the bulb had apparently burned out. The next morning, an electrician was called in to confirm its status. It was determined that the bulb had not burned out when the uninterruptible power supply was bypassed, using an extension cord. The dedicated power supply was found to have been faulty. Approximately seven hours had transpired before the light was reestablished.

The bulb is cared for by the Centennial Light Bulb Committee, a partnership of the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department, Livermore Heritage Guild, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and Sandia National Laboratories. The Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department plans to house and maintain the bulb for the rest of its life, regardless of length. When it does go out, they have no plans for it, although Ripley's Believe it or Not! has requested it for their museum. The bulb's long life has been attributed to its low power, nearly continuous operation, and dedicated power supply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light​

Dedicated website (with webcam!) here:
http://www.centennialbulb.org

Edit: Not sure camera is currently working.

Background & Analysis of Longevity:
https://priceonomics.com/the-mysterious-case-of-the-113-year-old-light-bulb/
 
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Yithian said:
"The hand-blown, carbon-filament common light bulb was manufactured in Shelby, Ohio, by the Shelby Electric Company in the late 1890s; many just like it still exist and can be found functioning."
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Two things to be gleaned from that:

a) It's not the only one, then, just (presumably) the only one with an unbroken, proven provenance*, and

b) Maybe the fact that it's hand-blown and (again presumably) hand-assembled will have given it and its kin quite a wide variation in component quality. Hand-blown glass will by nature have relatively inconsistent thickness compared with others in the same batch, as opposed to mechanically mass-produced glass which will be absolute uniform. Equally, the filaments may also have been hand-assembled, and as a result some may also be more robust than others. These will be vacuum bulbs, so the stronger and thicker the individual elements the longer-lasting the bulb will be, provided it's not damaged. As this one is in a fire-station, it's a fair bet that it's on a relatively high-ceiling, and therefore less susceptible to being knocked or struck by accident.

None of which takes away from the fact that it, and others, have lasted this long.

As for planned obsolescence, I've never been able to really make up my mind about it. Generally, I think manufacturers have for a long time (especially post-WWII) concentrated on making consumer goods cheap enough that people will just replace them when they go, as opposed to making things very expensive but equally more long-lasting (I'm old enough to remember when everyone had to rent their colour TVs, in the UK at least, as they were so expensive: now, if one develops a fault, you'll just buy another as they've become that relatively cheap.) Once they'd worked out how to make bulbs for - I assume - next to nothing on a huge scale, which in turn implies materials as cheap as they can go, then they're bound to be less durable. So, I think for a long time it was probably more about acceptably eventual obsolescence than deliberately by design, although of course the tide has turned now, and renewables and durability are becoming far more important. Maybe we'll see more centennial appliances in a hundred years.

*is that tautologous?
 
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Manufacturers don't want to produce an everlasting light bulb - they'd go out of business pretty quickly if they did.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Manufacturers don't want to produce an everlasting light bulb - they'd go out of business pretty quickly if they did.
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Of course, see above. But that doesn't mean they don't want to build them as durable as they can, hence the investment in LEDs, etc. The emphasis has changed from cheap-as-we-can-go throwaway to sustainable, and there are applications in which a near-permanent lightbulb would attract a premium - such as where they're very difficult to change or service. Built as a sealed unit with a guaranteed lifespan would make serious money: not domestically, but militarily, commercially and industrially.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Manufacturers don't want to produce an everlasting light bulb - they'd go out of business pretty quickly if they did.
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I'm reminded of a longstanding meme in automotive circles - that Packard went out of business simply because no owner ever had to buy a second one.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I'm reminded of a longstanding meme in automotive circles - that Packard went out of business simply because no owner ever had to buy a second one.
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And they then went into making printers, and adopted a diametrically-opposed quality-control paradigm, and continue to be a highly-successful businesss...? Sheer conjecture on my part, I stress
 
Ermintruder said:
And they then went into making printers, and adopted a diametrically-opposed quality-control paradigm, and continue to be a highly-successful businesss...? Sheer conjecture on my part, I stress
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You mean Packard Bell? Completely unrelated. I think Hewlett-Packard is also unrelated.
 
Love that. My downstairs bog has an elderly bulb. Not that elderly though.

I fix up old Singer sewing machines sometimes (handcranks, not electrical) and many a time you can get one for a few quid at a car boot, and all you'll ave to do is clean and oil it. They were so well engineered, it is hard for them to have a part fail. And if it did, you can easily find a spare. I have had some with accessories that are worth a lot more money than the entire machine, because they were made so well and so accurately that they work better than any modern one, no matter how state of the art...

They were made in their millions, mass produced and yet made to perfection.

By way of contrast, I often walk past a shop which sells modern ones and you're looking at well over £1000 in some cases for some computerised behemoth that is flimsy, crap and most definitely has built in obsolesence, making it more than likely to fail within 5 - 10 years. They were built to die.
 
Very true. In the tech college at which I used to work, our original site (early 1960s vintage) had a couple of lathes in the machine shop that were there from day one, solid heavy British boiler plate jobs that just kept going and working perfectly. In contrast the 80s and 90s ones alongside used to break down far more regularly, and the all-singing, all-dancing most up-to-date one worked on average about three hours a week before having an attack of the vapours. When the campus moved to a bespoke site with a state of the art workshop the old workhorses were unceremoniously dumped much to the dismay of the lecturers, who loved them as they taught would-be machinists to actually turn metal first hand as opposed to programming something else to do it. Dying arts and craftsmanship.
 
There's an engineering firm on the mainland which I've used for fabricating unobtainable car parts. They only seem to employ 2 or 3 people, but every single piece of machinery in there is old-school and fully manual. I counted at least 8 lathes and half a dozen milling machines, plus assorted drills and grinders, during my brief visit, and I don't think any of them were less than 50 years old. They don't advertise anywhere - I was referred to them by another company - but they certainly don't struggle for trade.
 
I've just read that Epson have been charged with designing their ink cartridges to stop working when there is 20% of the ink left.

When the new stands went up at Preston North End's ground, the designer insisted that they used the original turnstiles which were made in the early 1920's. He said that the quality of build could not be achieved today and they still work perfectly.
 
Spudrick68 said:
I've just read that Epson have been charged with designing their ink cartridges to stop working when there is 20% of the ink left.
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That's been a scandal for a long time. Amazing that they've only just been charged, after all this time.
 
My Rotel amp is older than me, my Dad bought it around the time he married my Mum.

Funny...never allowed to touch the hi-fi when I was a kid, end up looking after it when the folks get a surround sound system 40 years later.....

Anyway, it's close to 45 years old, it's worked harder in the last five years than at any point in its life and it still sounds incredible. I've also got Dad's Technics CD player and Kenwood tape deck, both from the late 80s and both still work like charms.

My three turntables are all 1980s SL1200 Mk2s.

I just don't think equipment is built to those standards nowadays. We've got through three TVs in the last seven years, screens failed on all of them, and don't even start me on mobile phones....
 
Everything is now 'value engineered'.
Not like the old days, when everything was a bit over-engineered.
 
Then: engineers design product, give it to accountants who work out the sale price.
Now: accountants think of a price, give it to engineers who have to meet the cost.

Also known as a race to the bottom.
 
Spudrick68 said:
I've just read that Epson have been charged with designing their ink cartridges to stop working when there is 20% of the ink left.
Click to expand...

Something about that doesn't ring true. Wouldn't it make more sense, financially, to fill them with 20% less ink than do that?
 
Dr_Baltar said:
Something about that doesn't ring true. Wouldn't it make more sense, financially, to fill them with 20% less ink than do that?
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They might be legally obliged to contain a certain amount. Also, they'd probably have to be cheaper if they had less ink in them.
 
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