{"id":23500,"date":"2014-01-01T12:40:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T17:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23500"},"modified":"2014-01-01T12:40:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T17:40:13","slug":"browning-out-the-fading-era-of-the-incandescent-bulb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/01\/browning-out-the-fading-era-of-the-incandescent-bulb\/","title":{"rendered":"Browning out &#8211; the fading era of the incandescent bulb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Maclean&#8217;s<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.macleans.ca\/2014\/01\/01\/the-incandescent-light-bulb\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kate Lunau<\/a> recounts the history of the venerable incandescent light bulb as new regulations kick in today to phase them out of use in Canada:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The incandescent light bulb was born on Jan. 27, 1880, when U.S. inventor Thomas Edison famously patented his \u201celectric lamp.\u201d Others had paved the way, including Canadians Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans, whose 1874 light bulb patent was bought by Edison. But it was the latter who perfected and would commercialize the technology.<\/p>\n<p>The light bulb \u2014 in which an electric current passes through a filament that heats up and glows inside a glass bulb \u2014 yanked North America into the electric age. Before then, \u201call street lamps were gas,\u201d says Anna Adamek, who curates the energy collection at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca\/English\/index.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Canada Science and Technology Museum<\/a>, which includes about 2,000 light bulbs. \u201cWealthy people could afford gas lamps for interior lighting, but most would use kerosene, oil, or candles.\u201d In 1882, the Canada Cotton Co., in Cornwall, Ont., became the first Canadian company to install electric lights. \u201cEdison personally supervised the installation,\u201d she says. In 1884, the lights went on in the Parliament buildings and, by 1905, the lighting of Canadian cities was well under way. Electric light changed the way people spent their evenings, and the way businesses operated \u2014 allowing people to work around the clock. Once electric wiring was installed, manufacturers were spurred to make all sorts of new gadgets and appliances for the home, from electric irons to refrigerators.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>As the ban approached, many fretted over the cost of replacing their household lights with CFLs and LEDs, as well as the small amount of mercury inside fluorescents \u2014 not to mention the loss of pleasant-coloured lighting at home. Traditionalists have responded by stockpiling their beloved bulbs. In the U.K., the <em>Daily Mail<\/em> carried a story of a 62-year-old pensioner, who hoarded enough to see her \u201cinto the grave.\u201d Riffing on the old joke, <a href=\"http:\/\/freedomlightbulb.blogspot.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\">Freedom Light Bulb<\/a>, a U.S. blog, asked: \u201cHow many politicians or bureaucrats should it take to change a light bulb?\u201d The answer: \u201cNone.\u201d On Jan. 1, 2014, Canada\u2019s new regulations will be phased in. Stores will sell through existing inventory; not long after, that warm familiar glow will be gone for good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Maclean&#8217;s, Kate Lunau recounts the history of the venerable incandescent light bulb as new regulations kick in today to phase them out of use in Canada: The incandescent light bulb was born on Jan. 27, 1880, when U.S. inventor Thomas Edison famously patented his \u201celectric lamp.\u201d Others had paved the way, including Canadians Henry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,65,84,15],"tags":[497,661],"class_list":["post-23500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-environment","category-government","category-technology","tag-electricity","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-672","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23501,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23500\/revisions\/23501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}