Sentimental Lights

You may have missed that the incandescent lightbulb slipped into the annuls of history a couple of weeks ago. By pure accident, we were in the Milford Lighting store the morning the long-anticipated regulations went into effect. An older customer was lamenting the end of the incandescent with a store employee, which brought it to our attention.

How fortuitous to be present at that moment in a sort of lightbulb shrine. I looked around for a tribute in the form of a timeline on the wall with the names of Thomas Edison, William Sawyer, Albon Man, Joseph Swan, and any others that had pecked away at incandescent light for years. Maybe some prosecco or canapes on a table with a lightbulb motif as a centerpiece. There was none. A missed party opportunity. Oh well.

Not everyone is celebrating. Many people regard the light from an LED (light emitting diode) as icy cold with a tendency to produce an annoying hum, particularly on a dimmer switch. We are in the process of remodeling our kitchen and installing new light fixtures overhead and under the cabinets. All LED, of course. We ask for “warm” LED fixtures and are satisfied with the quality of the light, which feels soft enough and subdued. Mercifully, our ears are not pitched to the hum they can make. I guess we are used to them. After buying the Hancock Inn in 2011 our friend and general contractor, the late (and great), Gary Voss, who shepherded us through the first year of facilities management, ran around the property on a mission to swap out every incandescent bulb for LEDs. If I take a minute, I can probably count how many bulbs that would have been, but never mind; it was a lot, and the energy savings were material. And guests—most of them—managed to leave feeling warm all over.

The desire to bring light into our dwelling places traces the arc of civilization, beginning with a fire in the room. It was a noxious solution up until Count Rumford, a New Hampshire person (and British loyalist), introduced the smoke shelf in chimneys around the time of the Revolution.

Candles have been around for thousands of years, therefore also the smell of wax. We burned whale oil for about one hundred years, nearly as long as we relied on the incandescent bulb. It did not hum, it burned clear and bright, lasted a good while, but smelled like fish (and was a poor reason for sacrificing a whale).

Kerosene followed and back in the day, we had a few of those lanterns in the house for when the power went out. It was slightly thrilling when they were brought up from the basement. Brass ones, I remember, which emitted an oily smell in the initial puff of black smoke until you got the wick just right. It smelled like history, like walking into an Adirondack cabin belonging to someone who has lived there for years, wears old sweaters, and lights the stove burners with kitchen matches.

Once upon a time light crackled and you could smell it. It cast wavering shadows, which a lightbulb never did. I can conjure an argument for why our collective imagination, the state of romance, and all the poetry in the world have suffered since the advent of incandescent light, which did away with dark corners, dancing silhouettes, and faces veiled in some mystery. And gave us realism.

I don’t mourn its departure. I don’t think Mr. Edison would either, given the advances represented by the LED. Inventors are attracted to efficiency. “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles,” Edison famously remarked. LEDs are seventy-five percent more efficient and last up to twenty-five times longer than their older relations. Having left behind the sentimental light of our past, we might as well get something more besides. The savings seem real.

Prosecco? Canapé? Let me light some candles.

Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, August 15, 2023