Longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs

by Vigier • 3 years ago

85 93 3 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

rex_lupi• 3 years ago

This is an interesting bit:

While it might seem astonishing that so many longest-lasting light bulbs have been so infrequently turned off, this is the precise reason for their longevity. Most of the wear and tear that leads to burnouts in incandescent light bulbs is caused by turning them on and off, not by burning them. Each time the bulb is turned on and off, the filament is heated and cooled. This causes the material of the filament to expand and contract, in turn causing micro stress cracks to develop. The more the light is turned on and off, the larger these cracks grow, until eventually the filament breaks at some point, in non-spectacular fashion, thus causing the light to burn out.

I knew running filament bulbs on low voltage is the key to their longevity, but this is another important aspect

memefrog2• 3 years ago

That's really not written in Wikipedia's tone.

0xEF• 3 years ago

This idea is in direct cobtradiction to the claims that the Phoebus Cartel gathered to lower the lifespan of light bulbs due to declining sales in a market saturated with long-lasting bulbs. This is cited by some as the birth of Planned Obsolescence.

I personally have not be clear on which side of this argument holds more accuracy, but given today's anti-consumer leanings in manufactiring (particulatly in the US), I have my misgivings about it all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

eru• 3 years ago

Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37046713

magicalhippo2• 3 years ago

I noticed this early on when I noticed how often I changed the light bulb in the bathroom compared to the hallway where it was always on. Once I thought about it, I assumed it was due to thermal stress.

ekaryotic• 3 years ago

I'm sure it would be possible to extend bulb life by ramping up the voltage slowly to reduce the thermal stress. not worth it in most environments, but in a bathroom, why not. I understand there are soft start mechanisms used in certain electric motors, i know of an anglegrinder that used one. maybe i could do a transplant some day.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

What type of bulbs are we talking about? I could see leds and CFL being affected by moisture in bathroom. Also bathroom could be slightly hotter and worse ventilated than hallway.

pfdietz4• 3 years ago

I don't believe that theory. Instead, I think incandescent bulb lifespan is limited by sublimation of tungsten.

Timon3• 3 years ago

Do you have a basis for not believing it aside from you having a different theory?

rcxdude7• 3 years ago

Both are relevant, and can feed into each other. A incandescent lightbulb that has been on for a long time is more likely to fail after a power cycle, as the cycling adds additional stress (anyone who's used them can attest to this: the most common experience with one failing is going to turn it on, only to get a brief flash of light before it fails).

rocqua4• 3 years ago

Sublimation will thin out the wire, which weakens it. But the final failure mode is the fillament breaking. This can happen due to the wire getting so thin it melts. But the thermal stress of power cycling can also cause the thinned out wire to break. Perhaps the micro-cracks also increase wire resistance, causing more sublimation.

The two mechanisms can easily interact.

mechhacker• 3 years ago

This is true for a lot of mechanical devices.

For example, turning engines on and off heavily thermally cycles them. It can get worse when they are rapidly cooled or rapidly heated. Jet engines running at constant speed have high cycle fatigue to worry about, but steady temperatures don't pose a thermal stress issue.

But shutting the engine off in cold air and letting them go from very hot to very cold suddenly will cause the thicker parts to cool slower than the thin parts, stressing them near the change in thickness. That results in low cycle fatigue (where you can count the cycles to failure in the dozens/hundreds/thousands vs. millions/billions for high cycle fatigue).

Workaccount23• 3 years ago

I had some recessed lights in my ceiling that I installed in 2000.

They worked daily for 20 years before I swapped them out for LED lights. Never had one fail.

I attribute it to the fact that the dimmer switch they were on could only do soft turn ons and turn offs. Always took about 3 seconds to turn on and off.

m0rissette• 3 years ago

Well at least I learned something new today!

audunw• 3 years ago

Technology Connections talked a lot about this and the supposed planned obsolescence of light bulbs

https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY

TL;DW: (if I rember correctly) Bulbs with shorter lifespans are generally more energy efficient. There was good reasons to not making bulb that last forever.

memefrog2• 3 years ago

More energy efficient, brighter and whiter.

trompetenaccoun2• 3 years ago

Is there evidence for a real correlation beyond the obvious spurious one: Newer bulbs are more efficient and at the same time have a shorter lifespan due to planned obsolescence.

formerly_proven• 3 years ago

No, this has never been researched.

rcxdude7• 3 years ago

The arguments from the basic physics of the problem makes sense: hotter bulbs means more light relative to heat output, but also shorter lifetime. It seems quite hard to get out from under that tradeoff even with improvements in the underlying tech (materials, manufacturing, etc).

speps• 3 years ago

IIRC, it's not exactly "more energy efficient", but rather "brighter light bulbs mean shorter lifespan" so you use the energy better but it's not inherently using less energy, it's using the same energy to produce more light. It also explains why the light bulbs from TFA last so long, they're all pretty dim.

weberer• 3 years ago

Wouldn't hotter bulbs mean less energy wasted as infrared light?

josephg• 3 years ago

it's using the same energy to produce more light.

That is, by definition, more energy efficient.

mrfumier• 3 years ago

"The Phoebus cartel was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925–1939. The cartel took over market territories and lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which falsely claimed to raise their efficiency and output."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

iamflimflam1• 3 years ago

But also in the same wiki page:

"As regards life standards, before the Phoebus Agreement and to this day the general service filament lamp was and is designed to have, on average, a minimum life of 1,000 hours. It has often been alleged—though not in evidence to us—that the Phoebus organisation artificially made the life of a lamp short with the object of increasing the number of lamps sold. As we have explained in Chapter 9, there can be no absolutely right life for the many varying circumstances to be found among the consumers in any given country, so that any standard life must always represent a compromise between conflicting factors. B.S.I, has always adopted a single life standard for general service filament lamps, and the representatives of both B.S.I, and B.E.A., as well as most lamp manufacturers, have told us in evidence that they regard 1,000 hours as the best compromise possible at the present time, nor has any evidence been offered to us to the contrary. Accordingly we must dismiss as misconceived the allegation referred to above."

jokabrink2• 3 years ago

The text you cited was changed just today from

[...] lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which raised their efficiency [...]

[...] lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which falsely claimed to raise their efficiency [...]

emphasis mine. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phoebus_cartel&di...

rcxdude7• 3 years ago

Is this assertion that the claim of efficiency is false actually backed up by anything, though? The cited article has a quote from a media studies professor who has apparently read the cartel's records.

oblio• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what your comment does, is it just to provide the Wikipedia link?

rocqua4• 3 years ago

The video cited above explicitly claims that the thinner wires (that last less long) are indeed more efficient. He backs it up with real experiments, and addresses the common claims that the Phoebus only did this to sell more products.

Specifically, the life-time of a bulb has to do with filament thickness (the filament sublimates until it is too thin, melts from resistance and breaks). At the same time, thinner fillaments will get hotter, and therefore be brighter at the same power level. (specifically, more of the heat energy is radiated away in the visible spectrum). This means bulb life-time and efficiency an inherent trade-off.

ekidd• 3 years ago

Has there been a similar shortening of the lifetime of commonly-advertised LED bulbs?

We bought a bunch of Philips Hue bulbs around 2015 or 2016. They were expensive bulbs, but every single one is still running fine. The downside for Philips is that once I replaced all my bulbs, I stopped needing to buy lightbulbs.

The Hue bulbs are still available, but a lot of the newer LED bulbs I see claim much shorter lifetimes.

afiori• 3 years ago

The claim of the video is that lifetime, efficiency, and luminosity cannot be optimized independently.

Meaning that the best 2000 hours incandescent lightbulb is either less luminous or less efficient (or both) than a well built 1000 lightbulb.

Wether the cartel was nefarious is slightly beyond the point and primarily of historical interest.

As a "proof" the centennial lightbulb is about as luminous as a candle, that is useless in almost every case.

It is impossible to build a new centennial lightbulb that anyone would want to buy outside of niche industrial or artistic applications.

phpisthebest3• 3 years ago

That was one of the first videos were i disagreed with him completely... Looks like he let his personal politics get in the way.

"yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-competitive cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it is all forgiven" was is his basic take

The ends justify the means.

it was not up to the Phoebus cartel to choose what was a "better bulb"

armada6513• 3 years ago

yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-competitive cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it is all forgiven

That's a misrepresentation of his take. He does not say that the cartel should be forgiven for their anti-competitive practices.

He just said that what is often referred to as planned obsolescence, may simply have been an early form of product standardization and wasn't necessarily intended to be anti-competitive.

scrollaway• 3 years ago

Did you watch the video or hear what you wanted to hear?

His point was about the consumer’s end costs. It was cheaper to replace the lightbulbs than to be energy inefficient. He provided pretty solid evidence for that too.

It wasn’t about “saving the planet”.

louwrentius2• 3 years ago

I think you totally misunderstood the video, that wasn’t his point at all.

Because of the increased efficiency, you saved much more on the energy bill, even offsetting the extra cost for more light bulbs which were cheap even back then.

Even if you don’t give a fuck about the planet, most people care about their wallet.

georgyo• 3 years ago

His other points are better.

The cartel dissolved many years ago, and there wasn't a flood of _better_ longer bulbs because there physically can't be.

Longer bulbs have existed for a long time, but they are much dimmer in addition to using more power. As such they are not desirable to people.

Even beyond the cartel, power plants wanted the higher efficiency lightbulbs to reduce strain.

Those points are far better.

In any case, the cartel's goal definitely wasn't saving the planet. Can you even imagine a evil shadow organization with that goal? Their goal was profit, and to get profit they wanted standards.

Standards make it so a consumer can get various different products that work predictably. The world would be a much worse place without agreed upon standards.

bombcar• 3 years ago

You can do your own long-life bulb - get a incandescent and a dimmer and run your bulb at a lower voltage. It'll be dimmer, but it'll last longer.

raverbashing• 3 years ago

I'm very glad he made this video, because the meme about planned obsolescence needs to die

Yes you can make a bulb that lasts "forever", but it is very dim and consumes a lot of energy

armada6513• 3 years ago

Planned obsolescence in the modern day is a real problem rather than a meme of course. There is no insurmountable physics at play when a phone stops receiving security updates.

I wonder if anyone has actually looked into what the real first instance of planned obsolescence was.

rocqua4• 3 years ago

Just because the phoebe cartel did not limit bulb lifetime (purely) as planned obsolescence, does not mean that there is no planned obsolescence in the world currently. It just means the concept is not as old as some people think.

lloydatkinson• 3 years ago

Very weird article. Doesn’t follow the same writing style as the rest of Wikipedia and almost every bulb story has citation needed on it.

wunderland• 3 years ago

And the cartel of incandescent lightbulb manufacturers that prevented longer-lasting bulbs from eroding profits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

pserwylo• 3 years ago

The Centennial Light mentioned in this article also features in a later chapter of the wonderfully written 17776 [0]. It will take a while to get through it, but very much worth the time.

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

serf• 3 years ago

I read that after seeing the link in your comment.

I didn't care for the conclusions drawn in the story, but I liked the story itself and the multimedia aspects of it were engaging and fun.

thanks for the good read.

jareklupinski• 3 years ago

what the heck is going on in that page

the text just started growing as soon as it loaded

is that a new anti-adblock thing

laurent123456• 3 years ago

The world's longest-lasting light bulb website is also from another time: https://www.centennialbulb.org/

Unfortunately it looks like they took down the webcam, which is what I was looking for

chandlerswift• 3 years ago

Looks like it's still around! https://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm

On the home page:

Click the "Home of the Worlds Longest Burning Light Bulb!" image above to see the Bulb-Cam in action

Which...wasn't the most intuitive, admittedly!

rahimnathwani• 3 years ago

Related: The Dubai Lamp: The “World’s Most Efficient” LED Light Bulb

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808959

BoxOfRain• 3 years ago

On the subject of obsolete ways of making light, I really miss the aesthetic of the yellow low-pressure sodium lights we used to use outdoors in the UK that ate the colours out of everything. They were actually about as efficient as LEDs in terms of turning electricity into visible light but didn't last as long and eventually the last European company making them packed it in so we've more or less switched over entirely at this point. I don't really like how a lot of modern lighting tries to make night look like day, I prefer the night to look like night!

There's no reason you couldn't have monochromatic LEDs in the same colour, part of me wishes we went for that instead of white ones which are usually pretty cold and harsh though they've got a lot better on that front with the really warm white ones being quite nice.

Workaccount23• 3 years ago

I don't really like how a lot of modern lighting tries to make night look like day, I prefer the night to look like night!

The animals and insects hate it too. It's brain damaged people who like sterilization white illuminating every space!

(No offense if you prefer cool white, but kind of)

interestica2• 3 years ago

To build on my previous comment, the problem also appears to be a lensing issue: rather than providing diffused ambient light, new LED models direct it straight down so that a street scape will now be predominantly dark with weird cold-white “spotlights”. It’s not a pleasant experience when walking and constantly adapting to bright and then dark. At least something on the red end of the spectrum is easier for the adaptation.

tzs• 3 years ago

OT: I'm curious about a long lasting bulb I have. Nothing like any of those, of course...it is just that it has way more hours on it than I'd expect based on average lifetimes of various types of bulb.

It's an outdoor security light over my garage. I don't know what technology it uses because the bulb is screwed in too tight for me to unscrew it with one of those things you put on the end of a pole to change out of reach bulbs, and I'm not agile enough on a ladder to be willing to get up on the garage roof to do it by hand.

The bulb is clear so it is not fluorescent. I think it is some kind of gas discharge lamp. When it turns on it takes a minute or so to reach full brightness.

It's been there since I bought this house 16 years ago. It's on a sensor that turns it on sometime during twilight and turns it off sometime during dawn. So figure maybe 10 hours a night average. That's over 58000 hours of on time.

But 58000 hours is over twice the average lifetime of all the likely technologies for this kind of security light except LED and it is definitely not LED. So I'm curious what technology my bulb actually uses.

mikestew2• 3 years ago

Very possibly a mercury vapor[0], or low-pressure sodium lamp. Mercury vapor lamps have effectively been banned in the U. S., but that was around 2008 and your lamp would still be within that range. And, yeah, my experience says that mercury lights last effectively forever. I don't remember ever changing an existing bulb (not that my experience with mercury lights is all that extensive).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-vapor_lamp

nickdothutton• 3 years ago

I have several carbon filament bulbs in a large ornamental chandelier. They glow gently and while I have replaced every other bulb in the property (some of them many times) in just the last decade… these vintage examples just keep on running. Output light per unit of electricity is very low, but that’s not really why I chose them.

kjkjadksj• 3 years ago

Mercury vapor streetlights are also good vintage lights if you can get your hands on them.

interestica2• 3 years ago

The street near my parents home has replaced all the sodium vapour street lamps with LED equivalents. Now, there is less ambient light (the new lights tend to point straight down) and the colour isn’t necessarily a better option (that bluish not-quite-white from a cold temp light). I truly miss the orange distributed ambient glow of days (nights) past.

ralferoo• 3 years ago

A great example of why you shouldn't manually number lists:

The second-longest-lasting light bulb is ... and was installed ... on September 21, 1908
Another working light bulb dating from 1908 ...

And in the next section:

The third longest lasting light bulb began operation in 1929-30

Clearly the text from the third section onward all contain an off-by-one error, assuming there aren't any more yet-to-be-listed entries.

Longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs

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