January 2, 2014
I bought light bulbs - lots of them - now that the incandescent lightbulb failed to meet new energy-efficiency standards, and can no longer be legally manufactured or imported into the country.. Actually my apartment is so light and bright, I rarely change bulbs, except for my office which has a ceiling fan that has five 60-watt bulbs.
I decide to give the new bulbs a try and replaced the ones in my ceiling fan. The amount of light was the same but the wall dimmer no longer worked, not to mention a funny smell in the room. It's back to the incandescent lightbulb for me. I also found out that you can't use a dimmer with the new bulbs.
In addressing the question of who invented the incandescent lamp, historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison. They conclude that Edison's version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve (by use of the Sprengel pump) and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable. Read more ...