Some time ago, it was possible to order online (earlier they were on store shelves…) Incan bulbs, that were 8,000h-12,000h rated.
I would assume that an 8,000h rated bulb would do pretty long as a night stand lamp, maybe not 35 years but pretty long anyway.
(They have a little worse lm/W ratio than normal incans and a bit more reddish tint. )
Not just the giant hassle of getting the ladder out, but there is always the chance of taking a spill
On the OP’s bulb, the touch lamp dimmer is why the bulb lasted so long. First, they always start from the lowest setting onwards, so you effectively have a soft-start for the bulb. Also, IIRC, those dimmers never run at full 100%, so the filaments never get overheated.
I still have 18 year old Panasonic CFLs in my bathroom (the covered sphere bulbs). These days they start off quite dim and take awhile to ramp up to full brightness, but I find that absolutely perfect for turning them on at night or first thing in the morning. I would replace them, but the energy difference between the CFLs and LEDs isn’t that great and at this point I’ve become attached to them. To get the same function out of LEDs, I’d have to install a programmable wall dimmer and use dimmable LEDs.
I also have an odd incandescent fixture/bulb that’s still going. It’s an aircraft warning light, like you’d find on top of a building. And that’s exactly where it came from. As in, it was delivered to my back yard, still attached to a decent size of roof, by a hurricane. The roof segment was from a mid-rise condo about 1/2 mile away. I was quite amused by this and took a hack-saw to the conduit and was able to extract the fixture from the roof remnant. The red glass globe and incandescent bulb was still intact, so I had to see if it’d still light. Sure enough, it worked. And still works. I’ve used it countless times to illuminate things backstage and it’s quite a conversation starter.
it is easy to make a long lasting light, if you make it very inefficient, a reddish orange color is a giveaway that this is happening
the ‘100 year edison bulb’ is like this, very dim orange
wle
The first thing I though of when I read the title of this thread was the tire fire on “The Simpsons”.
Even that got beat.
I still have some Phillips CFLs from the early days when they cost $30-ish apiece.
It’s amazing to me how fast the world has changed.
Centralia and Willie Nelson were the things brought to mind by the title.
Had a VW Rabbit blow out the strut tower late one night coming through Centralia from a sink hole in the pavement caused by the mine fire. PA DOT used to just keep the repaving equipment on site because it had to be used so often.
Shortly after the incident with the VW, the state finally cut off access to that part of the road and permanently detoured traffic.
Always thought they should build a waste incinerator in Centralia, it’s already a toxic waste area and the few mutants who refuse to leave could work at the plant.
Double Win!
Or at least film a Zombie movie there.
The smoke coming out of the Graveyard at the top of the hill at night is creepy as sheet, so the studio could save lot of money on not having to use effects.
I think real life Centralia is the basis for the fictional Silent Hill franchise.
35 years Wow,think with dimmer would still last a long time.
Conversely, planned obsolescence fills the landfills and empties our pockets
Which is ok, sometimes in the winter. Not so much in 100°F summer weather.
There is a light fixture above the vanity in our master bathroom that had 6x 60 watt incandescent bulbs in it when we bought this house. My wife and I both hated the 360 watt space heater in the summer. It’s been 24 watts of LED for years, and we’re much happier about that.
I have had mixed results with the longevity of LED bulbs. In our previous house, the west-facing porch light would get rattled around by the winter wind and need replacing every 2-4 of weeks Jan-Mar. A CFL worked much better there. I hadn’t heard of LED bulbs at that time.
I use a light spray of WD 40 on the prongs of plugs .
Dang where are they banned? And why?
I’m pretty sure you can still get them in USA. I have them all over my house. I figure I get some eco points for driving a hybrid and being a vegetarian so I’ll keep my soft pleasing light (:
I put whole house surge protectors in our breaker box —- bought in Denver where they have a lot of lightning storms putting power spikes into the electrical system.
Just precautionary where we live, but why the heck not. Belt and suspenders.
I’d read an article a long while back about incandescent bulb makers in the 1920’s. A cartel of light bulb makers formed with the intention to manipulate the bulb market. They PURPOSEFULLY reduced the efficiency & lifespan of bulbs so that they’d sell more.
The Great Lighbulb Conspiracy
Maybe this bulb was one of the few that escaped that travesty?
Would LED makers follow suit at some point? I highly doubt it. Longevity is a strong bragging point. If some high consumption applications start revealing a deficiency in a brand, that could really tarnish their reputation.
Wellp, like with CFLs…
Building where I used to work pretty much replaced all defunct hotwire bulbs with CFLs (recessed downward-facing cups in the ceiling).
In pretty short order (being left on something like 16hrs/day, only shut off overnight), they were all replaced in a few months. Guessing that towards the end the hotwire bulbs still left were presumed to be high-mileage and replaced even if still lit.
Anyway, over the course of a few years I saw one after another CFL sitting dark. Sure, it could be that they were base-up vs base-down, but “longevity” was kind of a joke. They might’ve lasted only marginally longer’n the hotwire bulbs they were replacing.
So the trend I vaguely recall as that early CFLs were kinda hinky (growing pains), then had phenomenal lifetimes (maturing, bugs worked out), then went back to crap (quality fade). We’re probably still at the crap stage, and I don’t imagine LEDs are any better.
Aside from the nasty CFL fitting in the bathroom, my place is all low wattage incan, but it’s just me here and my place is small, and I have dark adapted eyes and a ton of torches. Cost is barely a factor at all, I use so little.
For any kind of ambient lighting incandescent is still the most natural and easy on my eyes. What’s more simple than a white hot glowing coil of tungsten? I wonder if all the IR that comes off incan bulbs doesn’t have a similar benefits to the deep IR in that recent study?
I still love my LED rockets but I don’t see myself ever abandoning incan completely.
Many years ago, close to 25 or so, we remodeled our business and installed a big flat lamp with 4 × 18W CFL tubes. By the time my brother worked in a lighting business, and he took care to install top of the line stuff: tubes with better color rendering and daylight CCT (versus the straight 9300K or so bluish stuff sold locally) and super expensive (by the time) high frequency electronic ballasts which gave the tubes super long lifespan: lots of years being lit more than 9 hours a day Monday to Friday and no less than 6 hours on Saturdays plus no holiday closings. Can't really settle on their average lifespan, never really cared to count, but it was extremely rare to see a burned out tube.
Me neither. Most leds still range between just inferior to outright crap compared to incandescent or halogen lighting. I have a nice bunch of incandescent bulbs in a cupboard and I buy from local chinese stores a few other types I still use.
My philosophy has always been best of the old and best of the new. It’s good to mix it up, makes things more interesting.
I also have to agree with HareLantern's last comment. Latest tech or more modern technology does not necessarily mean “better” (just look at the latest generations of :facepalm: smartphones stupidphones), for it to be so careful assessment needs to be done. I am weary of listening to @#$% comments, like when I hear “led is better” from the storekeeper at some local chinese store, for example. My answer to such things is to bring some incan or halogen bulb(s) from their shelves while saying the storekeeper “Seriously? I'll have these.”
Fact is, for things to really change for the better the mind patters and energies which give breed to them must really change for the better. 