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Comment by mikeytown2 | Hacker News Reader

The reason I believe that there is a conspiracy is that the technology to get a 10,000 hour incandescent bulb is fairly cheap & easy; you need a temperature compensating thermistor, AKA the Bulb-Miser [1]. I've used one before and they really work. I'm now 100% LED.

[1] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2007001...

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Oh, the bulb miser. I discovered this one time when I had bathroom lights that "warmed up". They were really dim for the first minute or two. It drove me crazy at times but one day I decided I would replace them, and pulled out the bulb and found this bulb miser thing.

I had no idea what it was, but my buddy did and explained it to me, and I laughed my ass off about it. But then I thought about it, and decided to replace one bulb without the miser inserted, so I would at least be able to see in my bathroom. Left the other 3 (it was a light bulb panel above the mirror) with misers inserted.

Sure as the sun comes up that one bulb would go out every year or so, but the ones with misers never did, in 9 years I was there.

That's interesting, thanks for the link.

One thing I have noticed in my house is that incandescent bulbs last longer if their power is ramped up to turn them on. We have this kind of switch in our main room and the bulbs have lasted longer than 8 years of more than 8 hours a day.

They are rarely on full bright so that could be it too.

Supposedly hot/cold cycles are bad for incandescent, so if you have dimmers and rarely actually switch the bulb off, that might be the source of improvement.

There is also a current surge when the bulb is first turned on, which shortens the lifespan and is also often the final straw that eventually blows the filament.

best way to blow out a lightbulb used to be to flick the switches on and off many times really quickly . Used to accidentally do this as a kid while horsing around.

This is the same reason old CFLs seem to last a lot longer than new ones. The old ones had better temperature ramp up circuitry.

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