The World's Oldest Light Bulb Has Been On for 110 Years

EZO

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"On June 18, the oldest-known working light bulb in the world will celebrate the 110th year it has burned bright. The bulb, which hangs idly about in a fire station in Livermore, California, holds the Guinness World Record."



http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/16/the-worlds-oldest-light-bulb-has-been-on-for-110-years/

Adolphe A. Chaillet, the inventor of the improved filament that has allowed this little bulb to burn on into the future.


More on Adolphe A. Chaillet

The Shelby Electric Company Shelby, Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

100yrbulb.jpg




P.S. Yeah, Yeah, I know, there have been one or two older threads on this topic, one of which is from 9 years ago but tomorrow (June 18th) is the bulb's 110th "birthday" and the older posts don't really have much info on this thing, so I thought the subject worth revisiting.


 
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Steve K

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checking the wiki page, I find this statement: " The bulb's long life has been attributed to its low power, near continuous operation, and dedicated power supply.[13]"

dedicated power supply? What are the details on that?

My assumption has been that the bulb has lived this long by barely being hot enough to produce visible light. In some ways, I'm more amazed that no one has broken the bulb over all of these years! How did it avoid getting hit by the random item tossed around the firehouse?

All in all, it is indeed remarkable that anything can function for such a long time! Maybe we should set up a white LED in a lab somewhere, running at 20% of its rated power and mounted on a huge heatsink, and see how long it can last??

Actually, until recently, I had a small endurance test for some hall sensors running in my lab. There were 39 hall sensors (produced by Micronas) mounted on a circuit board, powered with 5vdc, and held at a temperature of 145C. The sensors were rated for 140C, and I wanted to know how they failed. I thought that they would fail within a few months, or maybe a year. When circumstances forced me to stop the test, they had been simmering at 145C for over 5 years, and none had died! While I never learned what their failure modes were, I did end up getting better data on their aging than the manufacturer had. :)

regards,
Steve K.
 

EZO

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checking the wiki page, I find this statement: " The bulb's long life has been attributed to its low power, near continuous operation, and dedicated power supply.[13]"

dedicated power supply? What are the details on that?

Hmmm, that's interesting. I wonder if it's DC?

BTW, I got a kick out of the part of this story where every subsequent Fire Chief at the station house lives in mortal fear of having this bulb croak on his watch.
 

EZO

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I was able to find some further information about how this bulb has been run over the years but not specifically what the current source of power is. It is 110-120 VAC, not DC.

"First installed at the fire department hose cart house on L Street in 1901. Shortly after it moved to the main firehouse on Second. In 1903 it was moved to the new Station 1 on First and McLeod, and survived the renovation of the Firehouse in 1937, when it was off for about a week. During it's first 75 years it was connected directly to the 110 Volt city power, (subject to the power outages) , and not to the back-up generator for fear of a power surge. In 1976 it was moved with a full police and fire truck escort, under the watch of Captain Kirby Slate, to its present site at Fire Station 6, 4550 East Ave., Livermore, California. It was then hooked to a separate power source at 120V according to Frank Maul, Retired City Electrician, with no interruptions since."
 
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jtr1962

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Maybe we should set up a white LED in a lab somewhere, running at 20% of its rated power and mounted on a huge heatsink, and see how long it can last??
I'm already doing that. I've had a Luxeon running at 350 mA since January 2004. I didn't have a light meter when I first set it up. As a result, I really can't give anything beyond an estimate for how much it's faded (comparing it to one of the others in the batch of 5 I bought I'd say it's ~65% to 70% of initial brightness). My original purpose setting it up was simply to see how long it'll last before it dies. Seeing the way it's going, I'm picturing myself typing a post here when I'm 100 (that would be November 2062) about how my Luxeon from 2004 is still going strong. It's well past 65,000 hours and showing no signs of dying.
 

oldwesty4ever

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That Shelby bulb running for 110 years is a 230v bulb running at 120v from what I was told by a good friend who is a historic bulb collector. I have seen this bulb in person, it is located at a firehouse in Livermore. It is very dim!

Maybe a LED can easily beat this bulb? CREE has LEDs still running after 100,000+ hours, but they are constantly replacing the driver units. LEDs themselves rarely fail, its the driver units that cause total failure of the intergrated units.
 

Timbo

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thats crazy, regarless of heat you would have thought the element would have just given up and snapped by now.
 

HotWire

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If that were in California they would have to change it out to a fluorescent bulb! Grrr....
 

StarHalo

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It's a carbon filament bulb, which means you can indeed make one yourself. It's just a piece of string coated in carbon powder, attached to the proper anode and cathode points on the metal base, then sealed in the vacuum of the bulb. You can get it quite a bit brighter than the Centennial bulb, but it doesn't compare output-wise to the common drugstore 50 cent tungsten bulb.
 
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DM51

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Some off topic posts have been deleted; we do not need provocative title changes or LED vs. Incan disputes in this thread.
 

TheRev.

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I stared at the cam for a bit, invigorating to say the least, lol i do wonder how long it can go?
 

angelofwar

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Some off topic posts have been deleted; we do not need provocative title changes or LED vs. Incan disputes in this thread.

Sorry DM... I started a thread with that title, and it was merged with-out any explanation. My thread title was meant in jest, merely poking fun at the ridiculously long life of this particular Incan, and wasn't meant to be provocative.
 
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NonSenCe

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nothing to add per ce.. very cool story. i root for the lamp. :)

one thing to add though this could be just basic everyday ho-hum story of no interest to us all.. if the marketing forces havent done an evil twist on us consumers.

long time ago the manufacturers decided that all items should have an expected lifetime. (planned obsolescence) thereby force us to change the bulbs sooner than never. just because they are pre-built to fail after certain time.

they COULD make them last for "forever", but that would mean no one would buy new ones in ages. bad for their business.

the real longlife bulbs of yesterday (time of cold war and eastern block era) they DID last for forever.. and as the iron curtains fell and the "west" engineering got the claws on the eastern lightbulb manufacturers their longlife bulbs went into way of the dodo-bird and consumers got the shaft.

need more food for thought.. nailon stockings of World War 2 era.. when materials were scarce and the high tech and knowhow of today was still a dream.. those stockings lasted easily a year in every day use. ask your lady friends how long a modern pair last.. some break down on the first time they are put on.

this is from tv-documentary called: light bulb conspiracy/pyramids of waste (2010) -i believe you can find the 1 hour program to view it online too)
 
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jtr1962

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NonSenCe, here is a great explantion of why we don't make incandescents which last forever. The basic reason is longer life means lower efficiency, so the additional power required for a given amount of light easily outweighs the cost of a new bulb. I think the "sweet spot" turns out to be ~750-1000 hours for standard incandescent, ~3000 hours for halogen. The reason for the longer life bulbs in the past was because the price of both electricity and replacement lamps was higher relative to incomes.

Interesting, there isn't an efficiency versus lifetime tradeoff for LEDs. Actually, the opposite. As you dim LEDs, lifetime goes up, and they become more efficient. You need more emitters, however, so the price of an emitter dictates where the operating point will be.
 

Mr Bigglow

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Is that thing still going? I first read about it when I was in high school, and that was, like, a century ago for sure. They must have had a better grade of carbon in those days.
 

NonSenCe

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i believe in planned obsolence. and i believe they COULD make the bulbs last lot longer for minimal investment per bulb if they WANTED to.

but they do not. then we the users would only pay theoretical 20c more per bulb (1.20$) and would end up only buying one instead of 2-5 of them 1 dollar each for same output.

and here is food for thought to people whom might be interested of this matter

a link to program revolving around this pre-built or pre planned end date/lifetime.. i think it works.. norwegian program.. 50minutes long. http://dotsub.com/view/aed3b8b2-1889-4df5-ae63-ad85f5572f27
 
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