Incandoesn’t

Farewell incandescent lightbulb; it’s been a great 178 years. Yes, you read that correctly. Thomas Edison, the P.T. Barnum of electricity, patented the lightbulb in 1880, but as with almost all of his inventions, he stood on the shoulders of giants. The first such light bulbs were created in 1845. We credit Edison, as with most of his discoveries, because he improved and popularized work mostly done by others. And we credit Edison because he had a great PR machine and never hesitated to take credit for anything that happened while he was in the room.

Incandescent bulbs produce more heat than light, and burn about four times as much energy for the same amount of light as LEDs. Don’t like LED or fluorescent light? Get used to it buddy. It’s too late to stock up on old fashioned bulbs.

Labor derailed the U.S. transition to the metric system in 1975 for fear jobs would be off-shored as a result of a common measurement system. How well that worked, and we’re still stuck with pounds and feet (as are Liberia and Myanmar). Somehow, no one managed to derail the death of the incandescent bulb.

Yes, we are going to pry the last space heater/lightbulb from your warm, overcharged fingers. OK technically not: there are no lightbulb police. No one is going to take your soon-to-be-burned-out lightbulbs out of your home or business: but from now on, your only choice after the imminent heat death of your light bulbs will be LEDs or fluorescents (Am I Blue?). And you may have to turn the furnace up