At more than one million hours of use and counting, this bulb proves that they really don’t make things like they used to.
Richard Jones / Guinness Book of World RecordsThe Centennial Bulb alight inside Firestation # 6 in Livermore , California .
In an otherwise unremarkable picayune fire station in Livermore , Calif. , there is a light bulb that has been burning since it was first set alight — in 1901 .
The Centennial Bulb , as this light has derive to be known , is the longest - lasting light bulb of all time . It has been burning continuously since 1901 , excluding a scant interval in 1976 when the bulb was disconnected from electricity for 22 moment while the firestation was moved to a unlike localisation .
Richard Jones/Guinness Book of World RecordsThe Centennial Bulb alight inside Firestation #6 in Livermore, California.
Where did such an unbelievable bulb get from and how has it been lasting so long ?
This Centennial Bulb was fabricate in Shelby , Ohio by the Shelby Electric Company sometime in the late 1890s . It first made its way to Livermore when it was buy in 1901 by Dennis Bernal , owner of the Livermore Power and Water Company . When he sold the fellowship that same class , Bernal donate the bulb to the local firestation .
The bulb was then hung in a hose go-cart sign of the zodiac initially , before being moved to a garage that the fire department used , and then to city Marguerite Radclyffe Hall . Finally , the electric-light bulb made its way to what would become its lasting home : Firestation # 6 .
San Francisco ChronicleWhat is known about the design of the Centennial Bulb.
There the bulb stayed , where it has become a local watershed and point of pridefulness . Though today the bulb has dimmed from the 30 - watt output of its beginnings to a comparatively meager four watts ( about the yield of an average night light ) , it still continue to burn — more than 116 years and 1 million hours of use later .
Given such accomplishment , the Centennial Bulb was discern as “ the most durable lighter ” by theGuinness Book of World Recordsin 1972 , and is now listed as the “ prospicient burning sparkle electric light . ”
Today , the great unwashed can catch the electric-light bulb in existent time around the earth via a live webcam broadcast viewable on the bulb ’s officialwebsite .
Dan Grebb/FlickrApple products are, by design, notoriously difficult to disassemble and repair.
San Francisco ChronicleWhat is fuck about the innovation of the Centennial Bulb .
What is so remarkable about this light bulb , however , is how unremarkable it in reality is . Though research worker are not sealed of the exact invention of the Centennial Bulb — checking it thoroughly while it is still running is unimaginable — it is believed to be not much unlike from any other bulb developed by the Shelby Electric Company at the prison term of its creation .
Though some of the lightbulb ’s inordinately long lifetime may be due to its unique figure , it is not unusual for bulb from that epoch to burn much , much longer than we are wonted to .
That ’s because this light medulla was manufacture before the life history yoke of light medulla was unnaturally set by lighting companies in the 1920s , as many now claim .
It was then that the largest light bulb company of the metre — Philips , Osram , and General Electric — met in Sweden to formPhoebus , a spheric cartel , according to some researchers .
With this cartel , the companies set light bulb life expectancies at 1,000 hour under the guise that this made them more “ efficient ” and would heavily fine members who designed idle electric-light bulb that exceeded this limit .
In world , the lighting ship’s company had created this 1,000 - hr policy because they had realized that by shortening the life sentence duet of their faint bulbs , they could accumulate more revenue from the same customer who needed to bribe new bulbs again and again once their sometime ones burned out .
Markus Krajewski , a media - studies prof at the University of Basel , in Switzerland , who has researched Phoebus , said , “ It was the expressed bearing of the trust to bring down the life span of the lamps to increase sales . ”
While the Phoebus cartel dissolved only a couple years later , the industry standards it make last on , and so did its model of “ planned obsolescence , ” in which products are designed to have an by artificial means forgetful life duo so that companies can beget greater gross sales .
This manakin of job came into style during the Great Depression , not long after the creation of this combine , as a path to increase mill jobs by having a higher turnaround of products . However , it quickly became merely a tactic for businesses to increase profits .
Nowadays , the practice of planned obsolescence is tired . Many technology and appliance companies , for example , create software and hardware that is tough to mend and is designed to fall apart down or become ill-sorted with subsequently give up products .
This hale consumers to exchange their equipment much more often than people in the yesteryear had to , just so that business can make more money .
Dan Grebb / FlickrApple products are , by design , notoriously difficult to break apart and repair .
Tim Cooper , a design professor who heads the sustainable consumption research group at Nottingham Trent University , believes that the only way to solve this problem is through government activeness .
He believes that minimum measure of durability , repairability , and upgradeability need to be set and that a decrease in taxis on labour and an increase in revenue enhancement on energy and raw materials would be the only style to curtail this practice .
He recognise , though , that these policy will cause a short - term decrease in economic growth , make it an unlikely cause for politicians to defend .
But until drastic change like these are made to baffle the marketplace , we will likely proceed to bribe product that have an other death work up into their aim . And we will keep replace our light bulbs every year or so , despite the fact that one made in the 1890s has been burning for the last 116 twelvemonth .
After this look at the Centennial Bulb , read up on Thomas Edison — who did n’t actually invent the promiscuous bulb — and five otherfamous inventorswho do n’t actually merit credit for their most well - know innovation . Then , memorize some of thedark truths about Steve Jobsthat explicate why we all need to discontinue revere the man behind Apple and the iPhone .
