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Edison Would Have Loved New Light Bulb Law, Says His Great-Grandson
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."
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.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Well this is refreshing; it looks like the truth. Usually people cramming words into the mouths of the dead are self-serving, bullshit-spewing weirdos. Either that or maudlin, irrelevant losers.
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.
Any sensible man would know we shouldn't have such stupid laws. If CFLs/LEDs/etc are so superior, why do we need a law banning them? If everyone cares enough about the environment to pass a law to mandate the use of such bulbs, don't enough of us care that a law isn't necessary? The government shouldn't be passing laws for this kind of BS, guidelines and industry standard recommendations maybe, but not laws.
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?
You can already get around the restrictions if you want an old fashioned light bulb, they're just called Heatballs instead. Two guys in Germany started marketing them as "heaters that fit into a light socket" last year after a similar law went through in the EU.
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.....
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Edison would have loved LEDs and hated CFLs. LEDs are always DC and CFL always AC inside.
While that is completely true, today, it's not relevant to the situation around the last turn of the century. The primary consumer of electricity back then was industry, which used it to run large, steady state electric motors. The motors were designed to run at one single speed, directly off the mains frequency, and the utilities offered a number of different frequencies (besides 60Hz) to cater to different customers. There was no conversion needed, and brushless AC motors were much more reliable than brushed DC motors. Brushless DC motors have only been available since the mid 60s due to the availability of microprocessor-based controller circuitry.
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.
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.