Edison Would Have Loved New Light Bulb Law, Says His Great-Grandson 473
New submitter futuristic writes with a link to Thomas Edison's great-grandson's take on Thomas Edison and the alleged demise of the incandescent light bulb. From the article: "My great grandfather's 100-watt incandescent will be replaced with new energy-efficient versions, including CFLs, LEDs, and — yes — new and improved incandescent bulbs. ... And my great-grandfather wouldn't have it any other way."
Re:FP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really?
Chances are he would have held one or more patents on the new light bulb so it would have been a source of income for him.
Holy crap, he's not lying.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy, on the other hand, is a university professor who appears to have actual research behind his claims. It goes against him, of course, that he's attempting to improve or revive his famous great-grandfather's reputation with this article, but the research looks real and I presume it's open to review.
How refreshing.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to save electricity, how about turning off the millions of street and parking lot lights at night? How about wiring homes with DC so that damn near every piece of electric equipment doesn't have to take a >10% efficiency hit in order to operate? Or a law to limit the number of hours a TV can be used (we can all agree that that freedom isn't needed anymore, right)?
Maybe we should have laws limiting the amount of power your computer can draw or how long it can be on. Or perhaps outlaw that scourge to computer efficiency, the hard drive?
And the free market always finds a way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Chasing the sun (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for energy efficiency, but I've yet to find a CFL or LED that feels as good as the light from an incandescent bulb. It just brings the most natural experience. The best ones I've seen are the 100W lamps with neodymium (purple) coating [zoomoo-aquaristik.de] which corrects the spectrum to be more white. There's also 60W versions of those, but as the filament burns cooler, it creates a bit too yellow/red light.
I've also tried a plethora of different CFLs including the "hifi" full spectrum ones, but they always give a bit of synthetic experience. The spectrum is still lacking. The modern HF ones are flicker-free, but I maybe can still sense some kind of subliminal flicker. Things like that. They just give the body a message that "something is wrong". Then again, there might be some other industrial high-power lamp types that give good results.
So, I've been in search for great lighting in the same sense like someone seeks the ultimate IPS display. After all I would probably be better off just moving to some sunny country. :)
Re:Well these days there's a lot of be said for DC (Score:5, Interesting)
HVDC is OK.
DC for homes is not - it's quite difficult to arc-proof a switch for 110/220VDC. In the late 1930's, when DC was being phased out here in Australia a couple of relatives of mine experienced arcs in DC light switches that progressed out of the switch and up the cabling feeding them. Only way to stop them was to go and find the next breaker upstream.....
I had no idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I had no idea there was going to be a ban on 100W incandescent bulbs. I currently have 4 150W bulbs and they're in use as modeling lights for my AlienBee strobes. They work well cause they provide really good reference lighting, they're cheap ($2), I haven't replaced them in the 4 years I've had them and they're fully dimmable. I'm not sure what I'm going to end up doing if I have to replace them, anyone have any experience with that? Are there replacements that will be just as bright that will work with a dimmer or do I just have to hope these bulbs never die?
Re:FP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that would have been "Consolidated Edison" eventually shortened to "ConEd". Otherwise, you're absolutely right. How much did he cheat the world from, by not funding Tesla? We'll never know.
Well, unless the conspiracy theory that Tesla managed to make himself immortal, and moved to Argentina to pursue high energy experiments for gravity control and space travel are true. I kid you not, I picked up a really good book on Tesla. The last two chapters went into this wild conspiracy stuff. What an awful way to ruin a really informative book. I was under the distinct impression that the publishers read the first few chapters, and confirmed the facts, but no on bothered to read the whole thing before it went to press.
The /. crowd used to mock this kind of story... (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea that someone's great-grandson should be taken as some kind of authority on what his grandfather would think -- which in ITSELF is just an "appeal to authority," void of any real meaning.
So this is an appeal to an appeal of authority. Or is it an appeal to authority of an appeal to authority? Whatever, it's meaningless.
- aj
Re:FP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Edison would have loved LEDs and hated CFLs. LEDs are always DC and CFL always AC inside.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not fair.
My financial worth is a fraction of a fraction of Warren Buffett's and I would be happy to have overall taxes raised if it would eliminate ills from society.
What disillusions me is seeing a progressive shift of wealth from the bottom of society to the top. This has been a mainstay of my rants for a long time [slashdot.org].
Whether your society has a flat tax rate or progressive scales, the 1% will have mechanisms and financial instruments to help them avoid paying their fair share; facilities which the 99% either don't know about or can't afford to exploit.
So now where do I get 75W incandescants? (Score:3, Interesting)
My shop light (wire cage lamp on a stick) could be populated with LEDs or CFLs, but I it's a lamp that sees rough use. I drop it, hit it with two-by-fours, and drop my drill on it all the time. LED bulbs are too expensive to justify in a location where they'll get abused, and CFLs contain mercury so it seems irresponsible to put them in a place where I expect to regularly break bulbs.
Fuck you Congress, for thinking you're smarter than I am. For the record, all of my household bulbs are LED and I love them.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well these days there's a lot of be said for DC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Like it or not, setting standards of construction, including efficiency standards, is the main reason for building codes.
On the contrary, in most cases building codes require you (the builder, that is) to hire engineers, or at least an architect. They usually explicitly disallow construction permits without a licensed architect's stamp on the drawings, and will often require the stamp of an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer even for a simple house. Requirements about soil properties, earthquakes, hurricanes, or anything beyond a simple house will usually require a structural engineer's stamp, as well.
Building codes (to the extent they are about houses) are far from sufficient to enable you to know how to build a decent house, let alone how to do it cheaply.
I'm not the only Tesla fan... good (Score:4, Interesting)
Tesla was amazing. Edison was a huge jerk-hole. There's a lot of detail that has already been said supporting my position. I just wish the rest of the world would learn about the two and how we have Tesla to thank for AC power and a lot more.
The problem is that Tesla's story also includes his vision for FREE ENERGY. If you can't put a meter on it, you can't add it to the history books... or something like that.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Not saying your point is wrong, but your argument does not hold. The top 5% control greater than 90% of the capital resources in the US, yet pay only 60% of the burden of maintaining that wealth (using the number you supplied). I'm not saying whether I support either side in this, I'm just saying you need a better argument.