Sans Fig Leaf
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"Lightbulbs"
3 February, 2005
We've accumulated a surplus of three-way lightbulbs. For some reason I never seem to have gotten the hang of lightbulb management.
When I was a kid, our family's lightbulb management was easy. Most every socket in nearly everyone else's house used a standard, screw-in incandescent bulb. Mom just needed to keep a couple of boxes of lights (usually 60 watt) in reserve. When a bulb burned out, we replaced it.
The basic design of the modern lightbulb--including the standard screw-in contact--was perfected by the boys in Thomas Edison's lab at the end of the 19th century. To be fair, practical lightbulbs that were identical in principle had been patented in England 25 years before Edison, but Edison sold everyone on his model, so in the end he won. Other than replacing Edison's cotton-carbon fibre with a coiled tungsten filament in 1920, and frosting the glass on the bulb in 1925, the bulb has been the same for about 120 years. If you could find one of Edison's E26 bulbs from the 1880s, it would work just fine in a modern socket.
Our family bought our first three-way lamp when I was about 10. It didn't use one of the new-fangled three-way bulbs. It used two bulbs. One was inside the body of the lamp (which was made out of dark, amber-colored glass), the other was in the usual position at the top of the lamp under the shade. When you clicked the lamp on, first the bulb inside the amber body came on. Turn the switch again, then the bulb inside the glass turned off while the one in the shade turned on. Put the switch in the third position and both lights turned on.
To be honest, the third position wasn't very useful. Once the main bulb was on, the addition of the dark amber light didn't really make the room brighter. But it was very cool (at least to a 10-year-old) to be able to turn off all the lights in the house except the one, eery amber lamp, and watch the light night fright show on Friday nights (the one night a week I was allowed to stay up).
The first significant change came when I was about 13 or so when Dad got a small flourescent tube lamp for his desk. And he didn't feel the need to keep a spare because the tubes would last for years, instead of months. Not long after that stores started carrying flourescent tubes that were bent into a loop. The ballast was in the center piece fitted with a standard screw-in connector. It was intended to replace the short-lived incandescent. Except it was much, much bigger. You couldn't put them in your typical ceiling fixture, there just wasn't room. But you could fit them into most table lamps.
My folks picked up a couple of those for the living room lamps. Again, since they lasted for years and years, you didn't really need to keep spares in stock. And if one did go out without warning, you could at least temporarily replace it with the older style incandescent.
Those simple days are long gone. I have lamps in the living room on timers for my houseplants. They all have compact flourescent bulbs. We have one traditional flourescent tube light in the kitchen, over the sink. It looks like it may have been manufactured when the house was built, in 1959. About half of the ceiling fixtures have compact flourescents, the rest are incandescent. I'd switch them all, but they tend to burn out as fast as the incandescents when I install them in some sockets. I don't know if it's the increased heat because of the glass enclosures, or if we just have old wiring that's prone to fluctuations in power flow which burns out the ballasts.
Then there are the three-way lamps in the living room. I've never been fond of three-way bulbs. I don't know if it's a hold-over from the silliness of the two-bulb amber monstrosity my folks bought in '69 or what, but I could take or leave them. Ray loved them. One day he went through the house (while I was at work) and replaced all the sockets in all our table lamps with three-way sockets. Over the years since his death I've been slowly swapping them back. Except the two big table lamps in the living room. That's really the only place where it's kinda nice to have the option.
Because of all those compact flourescents for the houseplants, I got tired of the harsh quality of the light in the living room. So for the table lamps I bought some "natural light" three-way bulbs. They're tinted to give a softer quality light. It helped balance out things a bit.
Then they came out with a compact flourescent three-way. One of the local stores had them on sale real cheap when they first came out, and we'd just had a significantly higher electric bill than I was expecting, so I gave in to the temptation to try one, just to see how it worked, and maybe get the electric bill under control.
Except I still had spare three-way incandescent bulbs in the cabinet. When I put in the compact flourescent, I had one more incandescent to add to the stash. Which I will be using more slowly now, since only one lamp remains to use them.
My habits are anachronistic. I was raised to believe that being prepared with spare bulbs was a virtue. Certainly that was true when all the sockets were the same, stores were only open during daylight hours on certain days, and the basic design of the lightbulb remained the same for decades at a time.
Now, within walking distance of my home, there are not one but three stores that are open 24 hours and where I can buy, among other things, lightbulbs. Innovation is moving so fast that this week's standard feature is next week's obsolete.
What got me thinking of all of this was a news story I read this week. There's a town in northern Alaska that is trying to get permits to buy a new "miniature" nuclear power plant because it's cheaper than shipping and storing tons of deisel fuel to run their electric powerplant each year. Unlike the nuclear power plants built a few decades ago, which need to replace their fuel rods every 18 months, this new thing will run for thirty years on the original uranium core. And supposedly designed so well, it doesn't need highly trained technicians to be monitoring it every moment.
I can't help thinking it's not a good investment. I mean, they're saying that all these DVDs the movie industry has suckered us into replacing our VHS tapes with will be obsolete themselves in another three to six years. So I can't believe that in 30 years, when the fuel core of that plant needs to be replaced, that the town is going to be able to find a compatible replacement. They'll have to scrap the whole plant and buy whatever the next thing is.
If you don't believe me, just take a look at my stash of lightbulbs.
--Unknown