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A few months ago I started writing this blog but got way behind and I am hoping I don’t procrastinate and it becomes the 111th year Celebration of the Centennial Light Bulb on June 18, 2013. Suffering for a week without power due to hurricane Sandy acutely reminded me how great an invention the incandescent light bulb was for mankind.
As I researched stories about this amazing Shelby1 manufactured light bulb (see Figure1), I found many interesting facts about the technology in making light bulbs. As well as many interesting stories about the invention of the light bulb and the “Phoebus Cartel”2 that fixed the life of light bulbs to 1,000 hours.
As it in turns out 110 years is 963,600 hours.

So what keeps this light bulb glowing from June of 1901?
As shown in Figure 2 the carbon based filament is thicker and more robust than the tungsten filaments of today’s light bulb. A detailed analysis performed by Professor Debora M. Katz of Annapolis Physics Department is available at the Centennial Bulb Web site.
“ Thomas Edison’s first commercial bulb in 1881 lasted for 1,500 hours; soon, bulb-makers were proudly advertising 2,500-hour bulbs. But in 1924, the main bulb manufacturers in America and Europe secretly formed a cartel to limit the average life of lamps to 1,000 hours. By the 1940s, 1,000-hour bulbs became the standard. Eventually, the cartel2 was exposed, and in 1953, General Electric and other industry leaders were banned from limiting the light bulb’s life span.”3
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