Light Bulb Transition Screw-up
(1) CommentsHow many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb? And why do we have to screw it in anyway? There’s no compelling engineering reason for the screw-in design. It’s a vestigial quirk that rose out of the transition from gas light to electric light.
From this Wikipedia article on the light bulb we see that one of the reasons Edison is well known for the invention of the lightbulb (despite the fact that 22 other inventors of incandescent bulbs are recorded before Edison) is not just that Edison’s bulb was better than the other ones (better incandescent material, higher vaccum, more economically viable) but also that he invented an entire, integrated system of lighting and facilitated the adoption of the lightbulb by the masses. In other words, he was very conscious of the transition to lightbulbs and did everything he could to make it smoother. As to the screwing in of lightbulbs the article points out:
It is an interesting side note that one of Edison’s successful marketing ploys is still with us today. In trying to get people to adopt his lighting system, he designed it to be compatible with the fixtures already present in households. That is why Edison designed light bulbs that screwed in; they needed to fit into existing gaslamp fixtures— which had to screw together to provide an airtight seal.
Who knew?
How retro.
This reminds me of that story about the space shuttle booster rockets being built to the specifications of a roman war horse’s behind.
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