Livermore's centennial light, the world's longest-burning light bulb

https://www.centennialbulb.org/

by tentacleuno • 5 years ago

51 36 5 years ago

moab• 5 years ago

Obligatory on the topic of long-burning bulbs: https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html

pokler• 5 years ago

It seems weird that Thomas Pynchon's name is nowhere to be found on this page or any other context about the source of this story (its from Gravity's Rainbow). There are also spelling errors.

mattowen_uk• 5 years ago

As it's not directly explained on the link, I'll ask here... How/Why is it still burning?

I have light bulbs in my house that blow after only a few months use, and normally only blow when I turn them on, if this bulb was power cycled, would it blow?

arcticbull• 5 years ago

Modern lightbulbs use thinner filaments that are substantially more efficient than the thick one used in this bulb, but they don't last as long. Further, this particular bulb never gets turn off and back on again which I'm led to believe causes wear.

If it were turned off and back on it would likely be fine.

Always a fun segue into the Phoebus Cartel [1] which pushed for shorter lifespans for bulbs - including by mandating thinner filaments. They did it to keep people on the treadmill but it was actually a substantial improvement in energy efficiency.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

edb_123• 5 years ago

I also do think that the filament thickness has a lot to say for longevity. I have a "decor type" large warm glowing light bulb with a quite thick and long filament that's been on for hours daily and turned on and off multiple times daily for 10 years now and counting. And yes, it is a real incandescent bulb, not LED :)

kbutler• 5 years ago

Some factors:

  - low voltage (below spec)
  - constant on, instead of cycling
  - strong element
  - backup power
  - generally a protected environment

thescriptkiddie• 5 years ago

Incandescent light bulbs have a trade-off between brightness and longevity. This bulb specifically appears to be running at a fraction of its original designed brightness.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/02/03/tests-shine-light-on-...

biggieshellz• 5 years ago

The carbon filament has gotten thin enough that it runs at a lower temperature and doesn't draw much current (or produce as many lumens), so it doesn't wear out as quickly.

longwave• 5 years ago

The bulb was accidentally off for nine hours in May 2013 due to a faulty UPS - originally installed to ensure the bulb would not go out in the case of a power failure - but fortunately it did not blow when power was restored.

giantrobot2• 5 years ago

Besides the other great answers, there's also survivorship bias. This bulb wasn't necessarily designed to last a hundred years. It's just an outlier that has lasted that long. We wouldn't give a shit about it had it burned out fifty years ago. We don't talk about other bulbs (today) that lasted fifty years even though that's an extremely impressive number itself. If the Internet was around fifty years ago we might have half a dozen webcams pointing to the "Half Century Bulbs" and being fascinated with them lasting fifty years and wondering if any will get to a hundred years.

jbay8082• 5 years ago

"Survivorship bias" is a favourite go-to for contrarians, but it's not a strong effect and when you see something surprising way out at the tail end of a distribution, attributing it to survivorship bias is a lost opportunity to learn something important. When something survives 2x longer than expected, it might be survivorship bias. When it survives 10x, 100x, or 1000x longer than expected, you should probably look closer and see what material or operational differences might be responsible, because there's going to be something worth learning.

Even if what you learn is just that any incandescent lightbulb can have a greatly extended life if you run it at below-spec brightness.

BitwiseFool• 5 years ago

The flip-side of it being the world's longest lasting light-bulb is that every other light-bulb made alongside it has burnt out by now.

Its longevity is most likely due to a unique confluence of factors, not simply because of a robust design produced before the concept of planned obsolesce, as is often alluded to whenever the subject is brought up. I also suspect its longevity is helped by all the delicate care and attention it has been given since people realized that it has been running for so long. It has a dedicated power supply, it is under-powered, and great care has been taken not to damage it. Normal lightbulbs never get such a luxury.

It is certainly possible a newer lightbulb has already been produced that will burn for twice as long as the Centennial Light. We just won't live long enough to see it.

devindotcom2• 5 years ago

As I understand it the issue with ordinary incandescents is that the alternating heat and cold from being used eventually causes the glue attaching the glass to the metal part to crack, which lets air into the bulb (ordinarily a vacuum/inert gas). The next time you turn it on, the air causes the filament to burn, causing the characteristic flare-up and scorch.

MisterTea2• 5 years ago

Er, that glue only holds the glass bulb in the socket. The atmosphere contained within is completely glass sealed.

What happens is the filament sputters away (like evaporation) and becomes thinner over time. It eventually becomes so thin it breaks from thermal shock when turned on. The dark spot on dead bulbs in the evaporated tungsten.

Fun fact: In theater a blown bulb can ruin a production so some of the more critical lamps are dimmed instead of power cycled to avoid blowing a lamp.

ars• 5 years ago

The simple reason is that it's not a light bulb, it's a heater.

They are running it at much lower than specified voltage, so are generating mostly heat, and almost no light, so the filament is not very hot. It's glowing a dull red, not white.

There is a quadratic relationship between temperature; and efficiency plus bulb life.

You may have heard of the phoebus cartel - they specified a specific bulb life, which directly translates into a particular energy efficiency. There's nothing about the manufacture of the bulb that they casued to be worse, rather if the bulb lasts too long, you just up the temperature and make a more efficient bulb (uses less electricity).

You can buy stage bulbs that last barely 10 hours, and run extremely hot, and also efficient, and for film that is the tradeoff they prefer (I guess they need a lot of light, and they don't really keep bulbs for long).

dvh• 5 years ago

Every time you increase temperature by 10 degree, it shorten the lifespan of electric device by 50%. If you run device that was meant to run at 4600°C at 600°C, well you do the math...

LeoPanthera2• 5 years ago

See also: The Oxford Electric Bell, which has "rung" continuously since 1840 on the same set of batteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell

I used to work in the same building as it. You can't actually hear it ringing, it's extremely quiet anyway and it's behind two layers of glass.

I made a video of it ringing way back in 2011: https://youtu.be/1Dx1-f8xQio

kragen3• 5 years ago

I really appreciate your video. Thank you for posting it.

kingcharles2• 5 years ago

Clicked on YouTube link, realized we've met in real life. First time that's happened to me on HN.

LeoPanthera2• 5 years ago

I have no idea who you are. But hi. I no longer live in Oxford. Or the UK. :)

TruthWillHurt• 5 years ago

Before the invention of planned obsolescence...

GuB-42• 5 years ago

It also now has an efficiency of 0.05 lm/watt, 200 times less than a standard "planned obsolescence" tungsten filament light bulb and 3000 times less than a modern LED bulb.

Planned obsolescence is a thing, but it is often a trade-off, not just companies being evil. By making things less durable, you can also make them cheaper, lighter, more efficient,... You also have to take technological progress into account. Your old dishwasher may last for 50+ years but it is heavy, loud, wastes water and electricity... So you may prefer a cheaper dishwasher that only lasts 10 years because you may want to change it later anyways because the energy savings of a new one can make keeping the old one not worth it.

There are cases of planned obsolescence that are, in my opinion, inexcusable (looking at you smartphone manufacturers) but lightbulb longevity is a worthwhile trade-off.

kej• 5 years ago

The Livermore bulb only has a small part, but this reminded me of the story 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future [0]. It's a fun science fiction story that is also a great example of web storytelling.

[0] https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

kibwen• 5 years ago

17776 is the most important speculative fiction that I've read in the past decade. Don't be turned off by the eye-melting lo-fi hypermedia aesthetic, or the fact that the framing narrative is ostensibly about football, hosted on a sports website, and written by a sportswriter (all of whose work is brilliant, BTW, even if you don't follow sports). As absurdly silly as the premise is, it's quietly a thought-provoking treatment on how humans adapt to post-scarcity and utopia, and changed how I view the human relationship to modern video games.

There's also (the first half of) a sequel, 20020: https://www.sbnation.com/secret-base/21410129/20020/

kingcharles2• 5 years ago

WTF. I DON'T EVEN.

I have no idea what I just experienced. My PC fan spooled up to max speed when I clicked on the link and everything went all 2001 Entering The Monolith on me. I panicked, but I stuck with it.

mlok• 5 years ago

Wow !! This is amazing. My last comment on HN was 5 days ago when I threw a bottle to the sea for a website I saw years ago : a story told in a calendar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29009014

And there it is !!! I find it again here thanks to you and your comment. (I was not much interested in this story so I was about to leave and I just had a quick look at the first comment : yours) This is an incredible luck ! Thank you very much !

th0ma5• 5 years ago

Made in my hometown of Shelby, Ohio.

dang• 5 years ago

Some past threads. Others?

Centennial Light - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20427081 - July 2019 (20 comments)

This Light Bulb has been burning for 110 Years straight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8749576 - Dec 2014 (1 comment)

The Centennial Light, a bulb that's reportedly been burning for 113 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353200 - Sept 2014 (29 comments)

The lightbulb that's been burning for almost 110 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642483 - June 2011 (9 comments)

Livermore's centennial light, the world's longest-burning light bulb

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