the light that stayed
In Livermore, California, a bulb over the fire trucks has burned since 1901. Hand-blown; sixty watts once, four dim ones now. Still a nightlight over the trucks. It turned 125 this year. It has gone dark only a few times: a week in 1937; twenty-two minutes in 1976. Rather than unscrew it, they cut its cord and moved it with a firetruck escort to the emergency generator. Ever since, it runs on an uninterruptible power supply. Guinness calls it the world's longest-burning light bulb. In 2013 its power supply failed; the webcam watched it go dark. An electrician bypassed it with an extension cord. It came back at sixty watts, like new, for a few hours, then settled to four. In June the town sang happy birthday to it. In August the city approved a $25 million station overhaul; one more move is coming. Moving it is easy; turning a 125-year-old filament off and on is not. “I did not think that one of the highest profile projects in my career would involve a light bulb,” said senior civil engineer Leon Tang. The others in this series did something: outran, copied, waited, came down, stepped aside, answered a touch. This one just stayed. Staying takes a town. The light that stayed.