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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."
It isn't old vs new technology, it was where he could make the most. I'm sure he'd love the new laws....if he could make a buck from them.
...that had Thomas Edison been alive today, he would have held the patents on these assorted new lightbulbs.
...he just bought the patent from two Toronto inventors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Woodward_(inventor)
"Consider the lillies of the goddamn field."
You mean Washington, DC? Because you can't do half of the things with direct current that are possible with AC. And I don't mean Anonymous Cowards. AND DC is in fact way more dangerous than AC, especially if the AC frequency is very high.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
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?
Yep, that's why every single device in my house has an AC/DC converter, to convert that superior AC to something that they can actually fucking use.
Puts out a ton of waste heat in the process too, although since it's winter now, I suppose that's just as well.
The AC/DC converters to your electronics are where you're spending most of your energy, huh? Do you have those hooked up to your fridge? Air Conditioner? Washer and Dryer?
AC power is the way to go power large motors. you don't need a commutator. Brushless DC motors are actually AC motors, btw, they need an inverter.
But only because we've got technology they didn't back then. When it comes to long distance transmission, voltage is key because of Ohms law. The more current you have the bigger your conductor has to be to prevent loss.
Well transformers can easily and quite efficiently step up and down AC voltage. So you can have hundreds of thousands of volts, far more than you'd want in a home, over a distribution line. There was no equivalent technology for DC back when the current wars were going on.
Now there is, thyristors. They are solid state devices that do a good job of efficient DC-DC conversion. So it is possible today to do HVDC lines and indeed it is done. There are some advantages (like no skin effect).
Prior to that the best there was is mercury arc valves. Those worked and were used, but had some serious limits. Even then, they didn't come on the scene until about the 1920s, and the current wars were back in the 1880s.
So sure, if we redesigned the grid today, maybe DC would make sense, however there are some things that AC works really well for. Thing is, we didn't design it today, we designed it in the 1800s and back then, AC was it. Edison's DC plan called for there to be generators all over the place since long runs were out of the question. That is a shitty way to do things, not only because you don't want generators in your neighborhood but because as with many things, generators scale with efficiency in terms of size.
You mean, my light bulbs composed of LEDs? Yes, they're DC.
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Heh. That's pretty much what I was going to say.. If he had the patent(s) on it, he'd praise it as the best thing since ... well ... the light bulb. If he didn't, he'd be pushing all the reasons that it was horrible and dangerous.
That's the way he played.. Otherwise, we would be praising the successor to the Joseph Swan light bulb.
Patents are a bitch, and Edison was the original patent troll.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Incandescent technology isn't being banned, just being pushed to evolve a little. If you need to dim look for 29, 43, 53, and 72, watt halogen bulbs. These replace 40, 60, 75, and 100 watt standard bulbs respectively and comply with the new law. These are marketed under the Eco Smart brand by Phillips, Super Saver by Sylvania (Made in USA too), GE also sell them. These are more pricey than standard bulbs and the Sylvaina ones are 1/4 inch less in diameter, but are a suitable replacement.
sudo mod me up
And they sold their original stock which they had from before the efficiency rules, then customs stopped the importation of any more because they are not idiots and know a smartass when they see one.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&twu=1&u=http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/kleinheizgeraet-heatball-zoll-haelt-40-000-gluehbirnen-auf-11065089.html
People are missing the major point here: There is no incandescent ban in the US, only an efficiency requirement. If someone can invent a filament bulb which meets the requirements they are free to sell them... oh wait they already did and it is called a halogen bulb; you can pick them up at any hardware store.
Dimmable CFLs do work, (they're used in nearly all LCD monitors, other than those that now use dimmable LEDs). Neither is as simple as a dimmable incandescent, but they are available and they do work. However, dimmers designed for incandescent bulbs are not optimal for CFL or LED lights. Your best option to replace incandescent bulbs in dimming fixtures are the newer, more efficient incandescent or halogen bulbs, or replace both the dimmer and the bulbs.
BTW, only standard bulbs are affected by the new regulations, specialty bulbs (e.g. "decorator", "teardrop", "sconce", etc.) are not affected. These are the types of bulbs most frequently used with dimmers.
I never said there aren't valid uses for incandescent bulbs (particularly halogen bulbs), I only challenged the OPs statement, and I fully expect him to fail to provide a single valid example that justifies his statement.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Doesn't Warren Buffet want to change the tax laws so he makes less money?
Well you can believe (A) what a man says in political speeches or (B) what a man does in reality. In reality Buffet uses loopholes to engineer his personal pay in order to avoid taxes. He pays himself in dividends, which is taxed at a lower rate than regular income. If he wanted to pay the same taxes as his secretary he could pay himself in money, an ordinary paycheck, the same way she and nearly everyone else is paid.
Buffet favors an inheritance tax but he then gives all his money to the Gates foundation, again avoiding taxation.
Classic 1% behavior. Do as I say not as I do. Reminds me of Senator Ted Kennedy, all pro environment and green energy until someone wants to put up wind turbines that can be viewed from his beachfront property.
You can't transmit power over long distances at end-user voltage; the resistive losses make it impractical. A century ago there was no efficient way to step DC voltages up/down for long-distance transmission; AC made it possible to use simple and inexpensive electromagnetic transformers for this.
Even today, if we supplied DC to individual homes it would still need to be at a voltage too high for most electronics (that pesky resistive loss issue again), so you'd still need converters. Yes, they would be DC-DC instead of AC-DC, but this would only make them marginally more efficient.
What bullshit. Anybody who wants to pay more in taxes can at any time do so, without be compelled to do so. ... The only fucking reason this hypocrite pays less taxes is because he sets out to do so from the beginning.
No, THAT is the real bullshit. There is no contradiction between using "loopholes" and simultaneously wanting the loopholes to be taken out of the system because the simple fact of it is that there is no such thing as a loophole - only legal and illegal actions. Buffet explicitly wants the capital gains tax rate to be increased such that taking his income as dividends instead of earned income won't save him or his cronies from the higher tax rates that regular people pay.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
AC vs DC flamewars? Damn, slashdot must be older than I thought.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.