They sure do not make things anymore like the Texas light bulb that sold for a few cents and has burned for 96 straight years.
The North Fort Worth Historical Society will have a birthday party Tuesday for its famous fixture — a light bulb that has burned continuously since Sept. 21, 1908. The bulb was first illuminated when a stagehand at a local opera house flicked a switch and posted a sign that the light over a stage entrance was not be turned off.
“We have no idea why it has lasted so long. That is the wonderful mystery of it,” said Sarah Biles, the administrator of the museum where the bulb burns, complete with its own independent power supply.
The Texas bulb is about 40 watts and made of thick glass that houses a sturdy carbon filament.
Despite having lasted 96 years so far, the Texas light bulb does not hold the record for the longest continuously burning bulb in the world.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that honor goes to a roughly 4-watt bulb that has been burning at a firehouse in Livermore, Calif., since it was turned on in 1901.
Biles said the keepers of the Texas bulb feel no luminescence envy toward the California model because their bulb has had a much more celebrated history.
The Texas bulb was touted — wrongly — in the 1930s as the longest-burning bulb in the world. The opera house where it burned became a movie house, and actors promoting films in Fort Worth would stop to admire the bulb’s orange glow.
“Our bulb has a unique past and can hold its own, even if it is number two,” Biles said.