Fwd: California Town Celebrates 100-Year-Old Light Bulb Reuters (Byron Lives!)

[BillMullins68 at aol.com]

California Town Celebrates 100-Year-Old Light Bulb

Reuters

LIVERMORE, Calif. (June 6) - Call it a beacon of hope for a state mired in an 
energy crisis.

The California town of Livermore is preparing to celebrate a 100-year-old 
light bulb, a four-watt workhorse that has shone more-or-less continuously 
since 1901.

''Even though nothing on this Earth is permanent, this is something that has 
really hung in there through thick and thin,'' Lynn Owens, a retired division 
chief with the Livermore Fire Department and chairman of the town's light 
bulb centennial committee, said Wednesday.

''It's been on through the San Francisco earthquake, the first man on the 
moon, the invention of the car ... if that light bulb could talk, it would be 
awesome.''

Livermore's favorite light bulb, which will be honored Friday with official 
proclamations and a celebratory cook-out, was first installed in a local fire 
station in 1901, the gift of a local businessman.

The handblown globe, declared the oldest known working light bulb by the 
Guinness Book of World Records, blinked out briefly in 1976 when it was moved 
to a new fire station in this town about 35 miles east of San Francisco.

But it was quickly turned back on at its new location, and has shone nonstop 
ever since, Owen said.

Even the rolling blackouts which have swept California in recent months 
thanks to the state's energy crisis have not dimmed the bulb, which is hooked 
up to emergency generators which power the fire house.

''Blackouts don't have any impact on it at all,'' Owen said.

It has also become a major tourist draw for Livermore, and fans have filled 
some three visitors' books with comments and praise for the long-shining 
light.

''Sometimes when people come to look at it I'm sure they just think: wow, is 
that all there is?'' Owen said.

''But once you start reflecting on this little old dingy light bulb hanging 
there, you realize it is still doing the same job it's been doing for 100 
years.''

REUTERS  Reut16:56 06-06-01