Illuminating the Light Bulb Problem

Edison didn’t invent the light bulb — let’s clear that bit up straight away. In 1835, Sawyer and Man received the first patent for a light bulb; twelve years before Thomas would even be born.

Electricity, tungsten filaments, and nitrogen filled housings literally brought us out of the dark by kicking photons into the room. That’s what this is all about really, photon freedom — “let them out” I say! Except in Boulder County, CO, here they aren’t to be freed upward at night. Astronomers must be notorious anti-photon-freedom folk. ;)

While we’ve seen a couple different methods of photon liberation, the worst has to be fluorescence. This led to bad office lighting, Las Vegas, and some potentially undue fame for an otherwise odorless mile-mannered noble (neon, not Queen Elizabeth).

For a brief period, we all tried to buy into the idea that we didn’t really mind compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs and their weird spirals; we decided it was probably a good thing that we sat in the dark for three minutes after turning on the switch. We also thought it fun, cleaning up tiny glass spears covered in mercury when those bulbs broke. Let’s be honest though, we weren’t really helping the photons.

This CF-revolution of 2007 came at the same time that we collectively thought it would be a good idea to make incandescent bulbs illegal in the US (Energy Independence and Security Act). You can easily identify the best ideas, because they either have a lightbulb turning on above someone’s head, or they come with the threat of fines. Quietly unbanned a couple years ago with some legerdemain redefining lightbulb, we now wait for the courts. Colorado went ahead and sued the federal government over the General Service Lamp (GSL) definition and we (along with Vermont and Hawaii) flat-out banned high Color Resolution Index (CRI) linear fluorescents. This, because, if we are going to have these bulbs, we only want the mirky ones (low CRI)!

With no incandescents or fluorescents, how can we get photons when the sun isn’t around? Why, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), of course! They’re energy efficient (true), they beat lasers (they don’t) and they’re legal (currently). The most exciting part of LEDs is the honest packaging:

Have you ever tried to hold them to that warranty or advertisement? Neither has the US Department of Consumer Affairs. I write the date on the bulbs, save the receipts and the box they came in, and have been told: talk to the manufacturer, talk to the store, retain your receipt, it’s your wiring, your power is dirty, and one magical time, I was offered a replacement bulb to just go away — I’ve never received money back.

Now we have Smart-bulbs, allowing lights to turn on using your phone and handing hackers the network credentials you so trustingly gave to your light bulb when you introduced it to power, the internet, and your promise to periodically update the firmware to fix those security vulnerabilities. You’ve updated the firmware, right? See my article on smart-bulb security.

I like LED bulbs, it’s what we use everywhere, but I wish they didn’t have to lie on the packaging to sell them. While it does matter how, where, and in what direction we free those photons, this was a lot of effort writing about something that doesn’t matter; more precisely, something without mass.

(Image Credit: https://www.maxpixel.net/photo-503881 Creative Commons CC0, Public Domain). Originally published in Talk of the Trails, July 2021.