I haven’t written down any dates, but for the last ten years or so with all the push to stop using incandescent bulbs, I’ve purchased several CFLs that did not last as long as I thought they should. Has that been your experience as well?

I remember touring an energy-saving model home at a museum in Georgia and the guide saying CFLs were super longlasting. The Internet is saying they could last five to ten times longer than incandescent blubs. My wife almost derailed the guide by asking if their long life relied on leaving them on most of the time. Our CFLs have burned out just as quickly, if not more quickly, than regular bulbs, and maybe that’s because we turn off the lights when we leave the room, like our fathers taught us to do. (We’re not lighting the whole neighborhood, are we?)

As I type, it occurs to me the lights in this room have been in place for a very long time, at least long enough for me to forget when I put them in. They’re probably LEDs.

We wrote last year about the number of filaments Edison actually tested, because folklore has run away with that number. Today, I offer you a video that shows a light bulb that has been burning since 1901 and the story of a group of businessmen who conspired to keep light bulbs from becoming nigh-perfect.