Toshiba Ends Incandescent Bulb Production After 120 Years 430
angry tapir writes "Toshiba has stopped production of mass-market incandescent light bulbs, putting an end to a 120-year manufacturing history of the products. The company, which is one of Japan's largest makers of lighting products, had planned to halt production next year but brought up the date by a year. It will now focus on more energy efficient products, including LED (light-emitting diode) lights, which contain a handful of white LEDs and draw a fraction of the power of incandescent bulbs."
Maybe I never noticed... (Score:4, Interesting)
...but are Toshiba bulbs available over here in America, possibly under a different name? I don't recall ever seeing Toshiba-branded light bulbs on shelves here...
Flashlights (Score:3, Interesting)
I love my LED flashlights. I was a fan of Maglights, but the stupid bulbs would break. My five LED flashlights last a lot longer and I have yet to break and LED. Plus they put out more light than incandescent bulbs while using the same amount of battery charge.
Better to burn our than to fade away (Score:3, Interesting)
Go, go LED (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent! Glad to see that they're moving into LED lighting; I love LED lights. I've been testing out several of the early model LED lights in my house, and they have been working great-- low power requirement, long life. And the technology has been getting better very rapidly.
(And, unlike incandescent and CFLs, they're not particularly fragile).
Re:Efficiency (Score:1, Interesting)
And cost 50 times as much! I happen to love incandescent bulbs and can buy a four pack for around $1. Home depot is selling LED bulbs and the cheapest one is $49.95! How many decades of use will that take to pay for itself?
I love LED lights (Score:3, Interesting)
And I've been waiting for the tech to get better and cheaper before switching. I will not use fluorescent lights in my home. My eyes are sensitive and they give me a headache, take too long to reach proper brightness, use mercury, and plus the color is off. I'd have switched to LED light, even with the higher prices, if they actually put out enough lumens. The highest I could find only put out the light equivalent of a 10-40W incandescent. It's fine for like going to the bathroom late at night or reading a book, but for working on anything important (art, fixing things, building things, etc) they are not acceptable. I hope this is a big enough push to get the tech moving along and the prices down.
Re:so long... (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>unless you insist on buying the cheapest POS you can find.
I have Philips bulbs. I timed my 60watt-equivalent (13 watt actual) and it took 4 minutes to reach full brightness. And no it wasn't just a bad set, because identical bulbs I bought a year later still exhibited the same behavior.
I was not aware Philips make crap products?
And then there's the expense. Why should I spend $3.50 per bulb when I can get an incandescent for around 25 cents. And the incandescents have not been stagnate. New laser-carved filments inside old incandescents can produce the same brightness as a 60 watt, but only use 40 watts.
So CFL v. old bulb == savings of about 25 watts * 1 hours a day (typical) * 30 days == 3 kWh saved off my 3000 kWh bill. Wow. Times 9 cents per kwH == 27 cents. Holy crap. Now I can buy one-third of a twinkie!
POINT:
Shouldn't our priorities be focused on more energy-expensive things like heating/cooling? If all new home standards were increased to "PassivHaus" standards, which bring heat/cooling to almost nothing, we'd save HUGE amount of energy.
I tried the whole CFL deal.
For fifteen years.
And now I'm switching back
Incandescents are the better technology due to simplicity (it's a resistor), cheapness (even poor people can afford them), ease-of-disposal (no need to empty the room like EPA recommends), cleanness (not reactive power), and does not interfere with radio waves (like radio, tv, wifi, et cetera). After fifteen years of testing CFLs, I've concluded they are inferior.
Re:Flashlights (Score:2, Interesting)
>mostly my lights are to be seen
Get two, and space them horizontally. The reason cyclists (and motorcyclists) get run over is because they are one-dimensional objects.
I've seen avid cyclists with orange jackets and flashing lights all over the place, but as long as you're 1-D, the driver's eye will not be able to perform depth-perception on you.
Imagine how many motorcycle accidents could be prevented with TWO headlights (and tail lights). Mass stupidity makes me cringe, especially when the fix is 0.2% of the cost of the bike. But hey, my LOUD pipes will save me...not.
Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Normally I'd just point out that CFLs are now available even from non-specialized retailers in a wide variety of color temperatures, so you can easily replicate the dingy yellow tinge of an incandescent if you prefer it, and I wouldn't bother to wonder why you prefer it.
But this is Slashdot, so I don't need to wonder, do I?
GO OUTSIDE
I know, there appears to be a giant hovering thermonuclear explosion hovering terrifyingly in the air. But, I promise, it won't hurt you. Just don't stand under it unprotected for more than a few hours straight, and don't stare directly at it. Look instead at the things around you which it has brightened. Notice the white (perhaps slightly bluish to your eyes) colors? That's the result of the object that non-geeks call the Sun, which puts out non-yellow light and which was actually responsible for most visible light for most of human history. Now look into places which the sun doesn't directly brighten, what we call the shade. You see the colors there, even more dramatically blue? Those are lit by what is called the sky - the thing above you that looks kind of like a far-away blue ceiling.
I know, this non-yellow light may be associated with some sort of pain for you - perhaps outside is where you remember failing at sports, or being teased, or being assaulted or shunned as a small child? I feel for you, but remember: it's not the light's fault. This strange, bluish outside light is actually just as friendly as the glowing tungsten wires of mother's basement. Your eyes may even have already started to adjust, so that this light looks as normal to you do as it does to normal humans. Go on back inside for now, that's enough for one day, just remember what you've learned: real light can be friendly too.
Re:so long... (Score:3, Interesting)
Myself, I use different "colors" and strengths of CFLs depending on the area of my house and what's going on. examples:
garage - very bright, very harsh lighting: 150w CFL floods with no diffusers running at either 8500k or 9500k, can't remember. cold, blueish light. too bright to look straight at
kitchen - warm, diffuse light: 50w CFL diffused globes running at 4500k. faintly yellow and pleasant
bathroom where wife does makeup - golden light, intended to mimic sunlight: 75w CFL naked coils running at 3000k. yellow and fairly bright.
Re:so long... (Score:4, Interesting)
"color temperature" is only the beginning. The color-resolving power of CFLs is horrible, and this is absolutely obvious to me and others. This might have something to do with the fact that I'm a photographer and might be a little more visually-tuned than others. Maybe you can't notice the difference, maybe most people can't, and that's fine. However, CFLs put out ugly light; I have yet to see one that doesn't. LEDs too. Not slightly ugly, like extremely ugly. While they are light bulbs in the first-order sense (they put out light) and thus are good where you simply need some light (I use them in my handheld shop light) I can't imagine anyone using them to light a well-decorated interior or do anything else, really. Switching to an incandescent is like a breath of fresh air, even my wife can notice after adapting to those horrible, horrible phosphor emissions. Human eyes are adapted to looking at black body radiators.
captcha: "spectrum"
Re:so long... (Score:2, Interesting)
Never mind, I got one:
"Over the period 2004-2007 the final energy consumption in the EU-27 Member States decreased, while electricity end-use consumption in EU-27 continued to grow, but at a lower rate than the economic growth."
http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/pdf/EnEff_Report_2009.pdf [europa.eu]
So - nice try Mr Trollhat, your bullshit has now been called.
Incandescent is ugly too... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you'd been brought up on CFLs or LEDs and they were trying to get you to switch to incandescents you'd be all, "It's horrible it makes everything look yellow!!!"
Re:so long... (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried to move to CFLs early on, and had to go back to incandescent until recently. The problem was that the IR the CFLs would produce would cause so much noise that remote controls frequently didn't work, and even worse, sometimes the bulbs would issue commands on their own. The first time that I was sitting at home alone with the curtains closed, and the TV started changing channels on it's own, I got a bit freaked out. After searching the house for whoever was screwing with me, I eventually figured out it was the CFLs changing the channels and volume.
I am 95% CFL now, and this seems to be a problem that has been resolved.
go the way of vacuum tubes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:so long... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the Ben Franklin quote closest to what you were thinking was "a penny saved is a penny earned" And "Penny wise, pound foolish" was around, as far as I can tell, before Ben Franklin was born. I didn't even know that people said the non-alliterative version of "penny wise, dollar foolish" until I looked it up for this response. Damned butchery.