I would have headed out to the 110th anniversary celebration of the perpetually burning light bulb, but I was haunted by the fear that I’d be the only one looking at the thing when it just happened to finally flicker out, and I’d be set upon by angry Livermorians with pitchforks. So we sent reporter Caitlin Esch instead, who took the following video:
She also reports the following:
The world’s oldest continually burning light bulb dangles high from the ceiling of the East Avenue fire station in Livermore. There isn’t an off-switch, so the 4-watt bulb—about the intensity of a nightlight—is always on.
A few hundred people came out to celebrate the fire station’s unofficial mascot. The party included a live band and several birthday cakes. Residents also sang to the light bulb. Some even dressed up from the era of the light bulb’s birth, like Lynn Owens, former fire chief.
Owens, who appears in the video, introduced me to the bulb on Saturday. He says the bulb brings a sense of stability to an inconstant world. Few in attendance seemed to believe the bulb will ever burn out. Perhaps that’s why it’s so popular among the locals. It represents both the past and the future.
If you’re worried about the bulb, which recently made a brief appearance in this segment of The Colbert Report, feel free to check up on it as often as you like via webcam.
In February, we did a post on the bulb and its history. There you can watch the bulb-starring film Pyramids of Waste, a documentary about “planned obsolescence,” which Wikipedia calls “a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.”