It is a hand-blown glass bulb. It glows with a dim, orange-ish light. Most people would walk right past it without a second thought. But this tiny object in Livermore, California, is basically a middle finger to the entire concept of planned obsolescence.
We are talking about a light that never goes out.
Since 1901, the Centennial Bulb has been burning inside a fire station. That is over 120 years. Think about that for a second. While you are probably on your fourth smartphone in six years and your "energy-efficient" LED in the kitchen just flickered out after eighteen months, this carbon-filament relic from the McKinley administration is still doing its job. It has outlived the guys who installed it, the guys who maintained it, and it will probably outlive most of us reading this today.
The Secret Sauce of the Centennial Bulb
So, what is the deal? Why does this specific light that never goes out actually stay on while ours die?
Honestly, it is partly because of how it was built and partly because we stopped building things that way on purpose. The bulb was manufactured by the Shelby Electric Company in the late 1890s. Adolphe Chaillet, the engineer behind it, had a specific design for the filament. It isn't tungsten like the bulbs we grew up with. It is carbon.
Here is the weird part: as most bulbs get older and hotter, the filament gets thinner and eventually snaps. It's physics. But the Centennial Bulb seems to behave differently. Some researchers who have looked at it (from a distance, because the fire department won't let anyone touch the thing) suggest that the filament might actually get more conductive as it ages.
There is also the "under-driving" factor. The bulb was originally rated for about 30 or 60 watts, but it is currently running at about 4 watts. It’s barely trying. It is like a car designed to go 120 mph that has spent its entire life cruising at 10 mph in a school zone. By running it at such a low voltage, the heat stress on the carbon is minimal.
The Phoebus Cartel and the Death of Quality
If we can make a bulb that lasts 120 years, why don't we?
This isn't a conspiracy theory; it’s business history. Back in 1924, a group of companies including Osram, Philips, and General Electric formed the Phoebus Cartel. They basically sat in a room and decided that if lightbulbs lasted forever, they’d go out of business. They literally signed an agreement to limit the life of a lightbulb to 1,000 hours. Before that, bulbs were routinely hitting 2,500 hours.
They even fined companies that made bulbs that lasted too long. It was the birth of planned obsolescence. The light that never goes out in Livermore survived because it was already installed and tucked away in a firehouse before the cartel could standardize the "burn-out" culture.
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Real-World Locations of Eternal Lights
California doesn't have a monopoly on this stuff. There are a few other spots where the "eternal" glow is a real thing, though none are quite as famous as the Livermore one.
The Palace Theatre Bulb (Fort Worth, Texas): This one was discovered during a renovation in the 1970s. It had been burning since 1908. It eventually got moved to a museum, but it proved the Centennial Bulb wasn't just a fluke of the Shelby Electric factory.
The Gaslight of Eternal Flame (New York): Not an electric bulb, but a natural phenomenon. Behind a waterfall in Chestnut Ridge Park, there is a literal light that never goes out fueled by a natural gas leak from the earth. It gets blown out by the water occasionally, but hikers always relight it.
Eternal Flame at the Arc de Triomphe: This has been burning since 1923. It’s a different beast entirely because it’s a gas flame, but the dedication to keeping it lit—even during the Nazi occupation of Paris—speaks to our human obsession with things that don't end.
The Physics of Why Modern Lights Fail
You've probably noticed your LEDs are supposed to last 20 years, but they rarely do.
The "light" part of an LED actually stays fine. It's the electronics inside—the driver—that dies. Modern bulbs are packed with capacitors and chips that hate heat. When you put an LED bulb in an enclosed fixture, the heat builds up, fries the driver, and suddenly you're back at the hardware store spending fifteen bucks on a replacement.
The Centennial Bulb has zero electronics. It is just a vacuum, a filament, and glass.
Is There a Downside?
If we all had a light that never goes out, would it actually be better? Maybe not for the environment.
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The Livermore bulb is incredibly inefficient. It produces way more heat than light. If every house in America used 1901-era carbon filament bulbs, our power grid would melt and the CO2 emissions would be astronomical. We traded longevity for efficiency. It’s a trade-off that makes sense on paper, but it feels like a scam when you’re standing on a ladder for the third time this year changing a "long-life" bulb.
The Psychology of the Never-Ending Light
There is a reason people tune into the "Bulbcam" (yes, there is a 24/7 webcam pointed at the Livermore bulb).
We live in a "disposable" era. Everything is plastic. Everything is temporary. Software gets "sunsetted." Apps stop working because of an update. Seeing something that has survived two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Moon landing, and the birth of the internet just by staying on is strangely comforting. It represents a level of craftsmanship we've largely abandoned.
Debunking a common myth: some people think the bulb stays on because it's never turned off. While it's true that the thermal shock of turning a light on and off is what usually breaks a filament, the Centennial Bulb has been turned off. It lost power during outages. It was moved to a new station in 1976. During that move, they were terrified it would break, so they cut the cord instead of unscrewing it to avoid any mechanical stress. It was only off for about 22 minutes. When they plugged it back in, it flickered and then stayed steady.
Lessons From the Bulb
We can learn a lot from this dusty piece of glass in a California fire station. It isn't just a gimmick. It is a reminder that the "better" version of a technology isn't always the one that lasts.
Innovation usually focuses on making things cheaper, brighter, or smarter. We rarely innovate for "forever." But as we deal with mounting e-waste and the sheer frustration of "smart" devices that become bricks after three years, the Centennial Bulb starts to look less like an antique and more like a goal.
What You Can Actually Do
If you want a light that never goes out (or at least one that doesn't die every year), you have to change how you buy and use them.
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- Check the Heat: If you use LEDs, make sure they are "Enclosed Fixture Rated." If they aren't, and you put them in a dome, they will bake themselves to death within months.
- Over-Spec Your Lights: Just like the Livermore bulb is "under-driven," buying a bulb that is dimmable and running it at 80% brightness will significantly extend the life of the internal components.
- Look for "Commercial Grade": Most stuff at big-box retailers is built for a price point. Commercial lighting is built for hours of operation. It costs more upfront, but it pays off in not having to climb a ladder.
- Don't Cheap Out on the Fixture: A flickering bulb is often a sign of a bad socket or loose wiring, not a bad bulb. High-quality brass sockets dissipate heat better than the cheap aluminum ones found in $10 lamps.
The Livermore bulb is still there. It’s currently at 4500 East Avenue, Livermore, CA. You can visit it. It doesn't do much. It just sits there, glowing, proving that once upon a time, we knew how to build things that didn't know how to quit.
Stop buying the cheapest 4-pack of bulbs you can find. Look for high-CRI (Color Rendering Index) bulbs with heavy heat sinks. Avoid "smart" bulbs for areas where a simple switch works fine; more chips mean more points of failure. If you want longevity, keep it simple. The more complex the tech, the faster it dies.