What’s old? How’d it start? What’s new and where’s it going? If you’ve ever wondered about the history of household light bulbs, join host Kevin O’Connor as master electrician Heath Eastman explains.
It All Started with Incandescent
The origins of lightbulbs reaches back to 1802, when a scientist applied battery-supplied electricity to a filament. The current heated the filament until it glowed, producing light. From there, scientists continued to work on producing a reliable light source, which eventually became the incandescent bulb.
The incandescent bulb’s make-up is similar to the original. Electricity is applied to the screw-in base, which then passes through the filament and creates heat and light. Unfortunately, 10% of the energy used produces light, while 90% just produces heat, making these lights inefficient—the reason why they’re being phased out.
Then Came Fluorescent
The next major household bulb was the fluorescent bulb. These bulbs contain a gas mixture of mixture and phosphorus. When electricity is applied to the contacts at either end of the bulbs, the molecules inside the gas begin to produce light.
Fluorescent bulbs are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs (about five times more efficient), so engineers in the 1970s worked on producing a screw-in bulb that could fit in a typical light fixture yet produce fluorescent light. That’s when the pig-tail style bulbs we now know were created. But they, too, are being phased out for a more efficient option.
Today’s Most Efficient Options: LEDs
LED bulbs, or light-emitting diode bulbs, are the most efficient household bulb options we have now. These bulbs are essentially a series of small computer chips that produce light when electricity is applied. When they were first produced, they were ugly and came in strange, futuristic-looking designs. But today, they’re more subdued and capable of producing the same colors and light output as incandescent bulbs, though much more efficiently.
How much more efficient? In many cases, LED bulbs can be up to 10 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs. This is why they’re now the new standard for household bulbs.
Resources
Heath shows the evolution of household light bulbs by breaking them down into incandescent, fluorescent, and LED’s.
Incandescent bulbs are officially banned from being manufactured and sold in the USA. Fluorescents and CFL bulbs are the next to go so Heath doesn’t recommend buying those.
For LED, he showed classic LED bulbs, an LED Edison bulb with a spiral filament, and an LED tube light bulb.
The longest-running light bulb is the Centennial light bulb.
