Oldest Light Bulb


"They certainly don't make them like this anymore, it's a real sign of how some things were better made in the past," Steve Bunn, who keeps the bulb burning at the Livermore Volunteer Fire Department in Livermore, Calif., told the Daily Telegraph a year ago. (Video interview below.)

The bulb was manufactured by the Shelby Electric Company—hence its nickname, the "Shelby bulb" —and designed as a special one-off by Thomas Edison's rival Adolphe Chaillet to last longer and burn brighter than Edison's light bulbs.

But Chaillet's light bulb design alone doesn't explain why the Shelby bulb has had stamina to keep burning through two world wars, a pair of global economic disasters, the entirety of the computer age, and the evolution of transportation from horses-and-buggies to orbiting space stations.

In its early 20s, the bulb may well have illuminated newspaper articles about the Teapot Dome Scandal. As it turns 110, it's Weinergate that's making the headlines.

"Nobody knows how it's possible," Lynn Owens, head of the light bulb centennial committee, told Time magazine recently.


The bulb hasn't actually been illuminated continuously since 1901—there have been have been a few power outages over the years that have shut off its quirkily looping coiled filament. But every time the juice came back on, so did the Shelby bulb, which is kept up high and far from prying hands at the Livermore fire station.
