So does anyone have a pre-1920's incandescent light bulb?

Coming to think of it when did the miniature bulbs for torches and radio dials come about?
Do any pre-1920's dial bulbs still work?

Does anyone have any advertising of light bulbs after 1926
that claims any other than 1000 hours lifespan,
which would dispel the light bulb conspiracy?

Why were electron valves not subject to the same conspiracy?
It occurs to me that the lifespan of the average valve
is much greater than manufacturer's claims.
At least they could potentially have made the non-military valves fail.


Do you think a consumer driven economy is a good or bad thing?
Supposedly, if stuff breaks, and we keep buying new modern junk,
there is more work available to keep designing and manufacturing more junk.
On the downside, the used junk has to go somewhere.

I am not sure it is a conspiracy, given that most of these products exceed the manufacturer's claims, we are benefitting from it rather than being conned.

Take a look at television picture tubes, simply a very large thermionic valve. These mostly last longer than the rest of the televisions they are fitted to and if you were to dig one up from an electronic burial site you could well fit it to a compatible circuit and it'd fire up no worries, assuming the yoke was still serviceable and its neck wasn't broken.

Even today I pull out fluorescent lamps from fittings that have been in service for 40 years or more. The ones in the old rapid-start fittings tend to last longer as filament transformers are easier on the tubes than plug-in starters. Both these technologies are being phased out in favour of electronic ballasts. Fittings equipped with electronic ballasts consume less than half the electricity of those fitted with either starters or filament transformers because there are no significant inductive losses. Recent generations of electronic ballasts allow the poor quality lamps made today to last longer than if they were fitted to older fittings.

Incandescent light globes are also of poor quality these days and you don't get a choice - all are made overseas. In fact, Australia no longer makes any lamps at all that I am aware of, with the last factory that I know of, located near Newcastle, NSW closing about ten years ago. When operational, that factory made most types of lamps for Philips, Osram, Sylvania, GEC, Crompton and Thorn as well as supermarket brands such as Embassy (Coles) and Home Brand (Woolworths). If you ever wondered why all the different brands looked alike, now you know.

I'd agree that the Nation's rubbish tips have growing pains because of the amount of old electronics we are throwing there. Will the manufacturers do anything about it? No - because there is money to be made for being unkind to the environment and that keeps their shareholders happy. Will The Greens do anything about it? No - because they see more value in senseless symbolic gestures that do nothing like the carbon tax rather than promoting the value of recycling programmes and forcing manufacturers to acknowledge that they have a responsibility to cut pollution.

Retailers have the market power to force China to improve design and build quality in the products they make too. Ever bought a pedestal fan in the last few years? If you knock it over you'll be shopping for a new one as it'll just literally fall apart. It's ridiculous that you can go into a shop and pay $30.00 for one of these things - that wouldn't buy a factory here the raw materials for one, let alone the labour, distribution, warranty support, retail mark-up and taxes. Personally, I'd pay an extra $20.00 for a better-made product.

Art, I have a red Philips squirrel-cage lamp from the 1920s, and a clear Philips "flaso-light" flashing bulb from the 1910s - both of which still work!

Chris

Yeah, I was getting specifically at the light bulb conspiracy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfzQzGNYaiU. Now I know where they got some of the footage for the U2 music video - Numb.

Great, would you mind taking photos of the elements while they are not burning?

I'm very curious about what to look out for,
and I suspect the filaments aren't going to look ordinary,
It is surprising an auto flashing bulb would last.

Brad, I have read a lot of articles with the links just off to the right on the forum...
It would be interesting to see what you think, it's a long video tho.

Hi Art,

I have a video of the two light bulbs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KxkfiwrXDQ.

Chris

Beautiful, and very interesting!

It would be nice to find an Aussie bulb that would come close to this one from USA, supposed to be the World's oldest working bulb, at a Fire Station in California. 110yrs old carbon filament.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004797/Worlds-oldest-light-bulb-110-years-old-Livermore-California-station.html.

Even has its own web cam, of which it has outlasted few.

http://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm.

There is a list of oldest bulbs, the fifth of which was a 1930 bulb in England which blew in 2001. Might be possible to beat that one.

That is featured in the video, and apparently, they know where,
and by whom it was manufactured.
It's designer was aiming for a long life bulb,
and his particular secret died with him.

I wondered at the Fire Station,
how they would install, or replace the UPS for the bulb
while it is still powered.
The Seinfeld "Frogger" episode problem, where George
purchased an arcade machine from a store,
he got the high score on it as a kid, and was still undefeated as an adult,
but to unplug it to transport it would erase his high score.

On my visits to our local council tip which is in a country community I am appalled at the consumer electronics which are thrown out.

A few weeks ago there was a pile of CRT type TV's, most in excellent condition.

Amongst all sorts of DVD/CD players, computer game thingos and all sorts of other such goods.

Literally piles of the things.

Alas my circumstances are that it was impossible for me to rescue anything such as the TV's.

The tellys are probably from a hospital or motel in the area if they are all a similar make/model.

It should have been illegal to dump televisions 20 years ago when the first widescreen CRT models started to appear. The trouble is, each level of government in Australia just keeps washing their hands of real problems.