This is the Technical Difficulties. We're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me in the studio today: He reads books, you know — it's Chris Joel!
Did I win one?
TOM: Yes! CHRIS: Good, carry on then.
Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan — Gary Brannan!
Indebted to *you*, good sir.
And the bounciest man on the internet — Matt Gray!
Good morrow, YouTube.
In front of me, I have a Wikipedia article and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point and a ding [DING],
and the special prize for particularly good answers, which is:
Today we are talking about the Centennial Light.
Oooo, that sounds highbrow and commemorative.
As opposed to lowbrow and commemorative.
Lowbrow commemoration!
'Dave's dead.'
[Laughter]
'Back down t' pit!'
'We're commemoratin' this with a giant brass arse.'
Thing is, it is neither highbrow nor commemorative, but...
Oh, f***. Is it in Britain?
Er, no. We're over in the US here.
Uh-oh.
Livermore, California.
I know what it is! It's the really really old light bulb.
TOM: Point! [DING] In fact... GARY: Balls!
GARY: Hang on a minute! CHRIS: Oh, right...
So how old's this light bulb?
Have a guess. From the name.
Oh, okay. Fair enough, yeah.
No, fair point, actually, because it's obviously more than a hundred, isn't it, now?
Is it Edison's?
No, it's a sixty-watt, mass-produced light bulb from the late 1890s.
MATT: Oh, it's just a bulb... TOM: Still shining.
Is it on all the time, or occasionally?
All the time. It's had a couple of dropouts, when there's been power cuts and they had to...
CHRIS: But the bulb has remained...? TOM: Yeah.
Right! Well, I find this really interesting,
because I read a Thomas Pynchon novel
wherein one of the characters is an immortal light bulb.
Gravity's Rainbow.
Yeah. Which is weird because at the time... it goes into this whole thing.
And it turns out there is a conspiracy amongst the major light bulb manufacturers
to not produce anything that burns too much over a thousand hours,
so that they can keep producing light bulbs.
Er, yeah! That is actually referenced in the article:
It is 'cited as evidence for planned obsolesence'... point.
[DING] Wahey!
Ahh. So it's a light bulb that's never bust.
Yep.
But if you leave it on forever... it's the turning on and off of things that blows them.
That's what does it, innit? Yeah. Yeah.
And if it's on forever then it hasn't had the stress.
I'm trying to think now if I've ever had a light bulb that's gone out while it's been on...
It's always when you turn it on, isn't it.
GARY: Yeah. It is, yeah.
On — plink! Yeah.
I don't think I've ever had a —
Can you imagine after a power cut, turning that bastard back on?
Ah! Right. Yes.
Can you say roughly what the procedures were when they had to move it?
Clench.
[Laughter]
Yeah. Walk like you are about to follow through.
Or you might put it on a trolley, actually, the more I think about it.
Ring the insurance company.
Ring the insurance company, certainly...
It's hung up in a fire department.
Does that give you an idea of how they may have moved it?
On a fire engine!
On a Dalmatian!
With a full fire truck escort, yes. Have a point. [DING]
A fire truck actually would make more sense.
You've still got your 'blues and twos' to clear... or reds and whatever noise an American fire truck...
TOM: 'Reds and woos'.
Reds and...! 'Woo-woo!'
Have a point!
But you've got all that mass...
which is keeping the thing from bucking around as much.
And if anyone hits it, it's not going to move anywhere.
Yeah. Also, fire engine — electrical device — water.
In a fire, someone's going to be —
It's not going to be on.
Yeah, it's not like the fire engine —
No, I don't think it's on in the fire...! I mean when you've got it up in the fire station!
There's going to be someone servicing an extinguisher at some point, and being like, 'Ooh s***!'
Even if you've got it in a little box or something, which I assume you must do.
It was transferred in a box.
Well, naturally! It's not going to be in someone's helmet, is it?
Was it the original box?
TOM: I don't believe so, no.
Is this thing still pristine, 'new in box' when it goes on eBay?
Wrapped in cellophane ready for eBay, yeah.
[Laughter]
'Light Bulb — Condition...'
'Near mint.' [Groans]
'As new. Only 100 years use.'
It's just sat next to a Polo.
What colour is it?
CHRIS and MATT: See-through!
It's a light bulb.
That's not a stupid question. It's a fire station. It might be red.
Okay, yes...
No... fire station, not brothel.
Yeah. Although... you know.
MATT: What?! TOM: You get the two confused sometimes.
Roxanne got a new job anyway.
She does have to put on the red light now. But only when going to and from a job.
Tesla won't have liked it, will he?
Tesla probably *would* have liked it. Edison wouldn't have admitted that Tesla liked it.
Yes, that's true. Edison would have tried to make money from it, you're absolutely right.
There is a webcam dedicated to —
F***'s sake.
Have a photo!
It's gonna be on until it goes off!
Ah! What happened on the evening of May the 20th, 2013?
Did it turn off?
Yes it did. [DING]
Did it bust, or did it...?
And that was the question. Have a point. [DING]
Because all they know is, the light has gone out. So they called —
Could they not have just thumped the switch?
CHRIS: You know, like prog rock. GARY: Yeah.
Well, no — it's connected to an uninterruptible power supply.
This is a lot of f***ing effort for a light bulb.
They put a UPS on the light bulb?
They put a UPS on the light bulb. You know what happened to that UPS?
MATT: It died. TOM: It was interrupted, yes.
You know why it was interrupted?
Because someone plugged a cord in the wrong socket.
So they've got to very gently turn it back on again.
Yes. Well, I don't think you can gently turn on a light bulb. I don't think that is a thing that's possible to do.
I don't know. I'm not an expert...
I'd say I defer to Matt, but... could you not just sort of have a dimmer switch dealie?
I'm thinking dimmer switch.
Just slowly build up the current — I mean, more subtly...
probably use something that digitally manages the amount of current like an electric speed controller.
Probably, but those kind of things induce a load of noise, so that probably wouldn't...
Oh, right.
What's the problem with it being noisy?
You mean a different kind of noise, don't you.
*Electrical* noise.
Ah, scientists.
CHRIS: You know, like prog rock. GARY: Yeah.
So what's the second oldest light bulb, then?
'Cos me Nana's house did have one for a long time.
CHRIS: Actually, our spare storeroom... GARY: Like it.
Yep. We lost the light in the bathroom, so we've got to find something to just do tonight, can't go out...
So we've got this little back storeroom...
Right. Go in, pull it out: "Oh! Old 40-watt!"
Not energy-saving or anything else...
Well, they've been "illegal" for however long now...
I was like, "Oh well, that's quite odd..." Woolworths branded.
ALL: Ohhh...
...which tells its own story. So I think we're in with a shout for second place.
That's the question now. Someone is out there that potentially has the second...
Well, you've actually got a list here, and I'm not kidding...
Oh, someone's made one...
'Longest-lasting light bulbs' is indeed a Wikipedia thing.
Is there one in this country we can go visit?
Er... no, the second place one, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is in Fort Worth, Texas,
at the Byers Opera House, above the backstage door.
Third one's in New York City, installed in 1912.
What did the owner try and do to raise his profile? Of the light bulb...
Gave it a Facebook profile.
...to get up the listings somewhat?
Go around smashing second and first place.
He's the one that plugged the cable in wrong for the Centennial Light.
GARY: [Gasps] CHRIS: Dun dun dunnn! Scandal.
That is such a thing, isn't it? That could happen.
Did he edit Wikipedia?
No, he just wrote to all the agencies saying that it was a fraud,
because he was an electrical engineer and the socket wasn't old enough.
Ohhh, smear campaign.
It was essentially a smear campaign. Do you know what happened to this in the end?
GARY: No one cared. MATT: No one gave a s***.
No one knows. The store and the entire block on which it stood was torn down in 2003.
Ah. That's unlikely to achieve a win now, isn't it?
Did someone save the light bulb, though?
Well, there's also the question of whether the light bulb needs to be turned on to count.
Yes, of course it f***ing does! It's not a light bulb then, is it?
Well, it is, as an object...
Whoa! Oh, wow. There's a deep philosophical question in there.
If a light bulb is off in a forest, is it still a light bulb?
No, the prize has got to be oldest working light bulb or bust. Because there's tons of old light bulbs.
Yeah, but 'oldest working' could have been brand new in box from a hundred years ago...
Switch it on, it works: Oh, I've just instantly gone ahead.
Rather than one that's been on-off-on-off...
I just think... in fairness, the other one has been on.
Yeah.
But otherwise, you could just trump it with a light bulb you've had up your arse for a hundred years.
I like how you said 'trumpet'.
Brannan: official arbiter of the Light Bulb Wars.
The fifth longest-lasting light bulb...
Ipswitch.
Aaah! Let's go!
In England. The Martin & Newby Electrical Shop. Dated from the 1930s...
Burned out in January 2001.
It's him! It's your man with the friggin' light bulbs is doing it!
[Laughter]
All these say, building gets torn down, other one burns out...
He's going round one by one!
This is drifting into Pynchon-novel territory again.
GARY: Yeah!
Now, you mentioned Edison...
Oh. Yeh.
GARY: Actually, I mentioned Edison.
He designed a bulb that was supposed to last forever. What was it called?
Dave.
Everbulb.
Osram.
No, they're part of the conspiracy.
The Magnificent Bulb of Eternity.
I'll give you the point. Eternal Light. [DING]
It's in the Memorial Tower at the Edison Memorial Museum.
Has it broke?
Er... it still kind of works, but there is a slight problem with it.
Its filament's about that big across, and it needs 200,000 volts to get it to do anything.
Nope, nope.
Is it evil?
[Laughter]
TOM: Nope.
Radiation.
Ooh. No, no...
Cancer.
There's a slightly bigger problem with its claim to be the longest light bulb.
Never been switched on ever.
It just isn't.
It just isn't. It's entirely fake. [DING]
It's got a series of automobile headlights around the bottom that just make it look like it's turned on.
GARY: Aaargh.
As you said, Edison — bit of a cheat.
Yeees.
So that brings us to the end of the show...
Congratulations, Gary! You win this time.
CHRIS: Boo.
You win this sandwich grill that emblazons collectible images of footballers into your bread.
It's a Panini Sticker Press.
Americans... I'm sorry.
TOM: That has been Chris Joel... CHRIS: Goodbye.
TOM: Gary Brannan. GARY: Good evening.
TOM: Matt Gray... MATT: Bye!
I've been Tom Scott. That's been the Technical Difficulties, and we'll see you next time.
Mickey Johnson — Johnson Mickey.
Dick Willie — Willie Dick.
TOM: Will he?
GARY: Dunno.
No... he was killed by a stinger.
This is a coffin ray, so it kills with...?
Coffins!
Just chucking boxes at folk.
Shark... 'Come on! I'll 'ave yer!'
...the tune that Blur did that landed on Mars with Beagle 2.
It didn't land — well, it did land!
It landed!
It landed at high velocity. Downwards.
I know there's a thin line between 'landing' and 'impact'.
I tell that to the wife all the time.