A photo from open sources
Edison’s oldest non-stop incandescent light bulb 116 years old!
Amazingly, it was included back in 1901, when in the first plane in history has not yet risen air, and since then never stopped working. This unique American the attraction has been located in the fire department for more than a century California city of Livermore.
She, as you might guess, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. This happened in 1972, shortly after a local reporter Mike Dunstan learned from the employees of the station about unusual longevity old lamp.
The “centenary lamp”, as it is commonly called in the USA, has even own official website (centennialbulb.org), on the main page of which you can see the online broadcast of the amazing light source. A webcam installed specifically for this purpose every few minutes sends to the Internet a photo of a light bulb. Daily hundreds of curious people visit this resource in the hope of seeing that the “centenary lamp” has finally gone out (why do they need it?), however, this has still not happened.
A webcam was installed here in 2010, and since then it has managed break twice, but the amazing lamp is not subject time.
A photo from open sources
The miracle device was manufactured in the 1890s by an American company “Shelby Electric Company” manually. Glass for a 60-watt bulb blew in the traditional way. Her carbon filament, 8 times thicker than spirals modern lamps of this type, created using Thomas technology Edison, but under the auspices of Adolf Chaillet – a direct competitor Edison.
The secret of longevity of the “centenary lamp”
The old ladies explain the unusually high resource by the fact that in those times, manufacturers worked in good faith and created durable lamps, that is, they strove for this, not yet focusing on sophisticated, deceptive market needs.
It’s no secret that industrialists practice today the so-called planned obsolescence of the goods, that is, they produce any product, including light bulbs, with obviously short life, so that they quickly fail, and shoppers fled to stores for a replacement. By the way, it’s light bulbs incandescent steel was the first product that they specifically began to make not high enough for long life. To this end, in manufacturers of incandescent lamps even gathered international consultation, where we agreed to reduce the service life Edison lamps up to a certain (compared with the previous term small) number of hours. And only the USSR at that time did not participate in this deal of the century, which is why Ilyich’s bulb was practically long non-digestible (the older generation still remembers this well, born in the USSR).
A photo from open sources
The mystery of the longevity of the “centennial lamp” is also that it is never extinguished, that is, off-on cycles just missing. Namely, they, as you know, most often lead to burnout of incandescent bulbs.
And finally, the lamp in Livermore, although it worked initially with given power of 60 watts, today this figure is only 4 watts, which, you see, is extremely small for effective lighting, but economically in terms of longevity of the lighting service device.
In 2001, firefighters solemnly celebrated their centenary America’s little pride. Then a kind of “committee of a hundred-year-old light bulb”, dealing with the issue of its conservation performance for as long as possible – at all costs. Better be, Of course, if manufacturers of modern bulbs also took care of the longevity of their products …
USSR time �
