Centennial Light – A 118-Year-Old Bulb!
Centennial Light is now 118-year-old and is the world’s long-lasting light bulb. It has been burning since June 1901 and is currently located inside the Fire Station at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, which is maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department.
This Bulb is the Poster Child for Planned Obsolescence, (in which Planned Obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning and designing a product artificially which in turn becomes obsolete after a period of time) and has been officially acknowledged by The Guinness Book of World Records, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and General Electric as the world’s longest-burning light bulb. Can you believe it?
A bulb that survives and produces light for more than 100 years! The Centennial Light was originally a 30 watt or 60-watt bulb which is presently very dim and has been emitting about the same light as a 4–watt nightlight. A hand-blown the carbon-filament common light bulb was manufactured specially manufactured in Shelby, Ohio, by the Shelby Electric Company in the late 1890s, which was invented by Adolphe A. Chaillet.
During its long-lasting power of life, the Centennial Light has been “off” on multiple occasions but that has been due to human error or intervention and not because of the bulb itself. It has never burned out or stopped functioning and it has been introduced as a textbook example of planned obsolescence.
Even today the Centennial Light has been continuing to burn and humans continue to cite the light’s long term existence as a clear example of planned obsolescence. At times, people will fall for this very old featured bulb and will be captured by the photographers often. The oldest of all bulbs have been still surviving and producing lights for hundreds of years!
