More surprising than the planned obsolescence of analog TV was the planned obsolescence of the light bulb. The light bulb? Yes, the incandescent light bulb.
Invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, light bulb technology remained essentially unchanged for over a century. Fluorescent lighting became popular in businesses, but households continued to use Edison’s technology well into the 21st century.
Digital TV’s advantages over analog were clear to anyone who looked at it, and it was much more efficient. Fluorescent light, if anything, was considered inferior to incandescent.
But fluorescent light was much more energy efficient. Incandescent lighting wastes most of the energy it uses as heat; a fluorescent bulb can produce the same amount of light for a fraction of the energy.
Energy usage did not matter much at the end of the 19th century, but it became paramount as we entered the 21st. With surprising similarities to original TV, both industry and government began planning to leave the original light bulb behind too.
Title III of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 effectively banned sale of the incandescent light bulb. The law required energy efficiency that those bulbs couldn’t come close to meeting. As with TV, there was a phase out period, lasting until 2014 in this case.
A big difference from the TV transition, however, was that light bulbs using the new technology could be backward-compatible. “Compact fluorescents” (CFLs) were similar in size to incandescents and could plug into the same sockets.
Despite backward compatibility and much-increased energy efficiency, CFLs were not popular with the public. They took time to fully “turn on,” and their light still seemed inferior to what had come before. CFLs also had a much higher initial cost than incandescents. Things were looking dark for the rollout.
As is often the case, technology came to its own rescue. Light emitting diodes (LEDs) had existed since the 1960s, and LED-based light bulbs would rapidly obsolete CFLs. LED bulbs turned on immediately, produced “better” light and were even more efficient. CFLs are now just a footnote in obsolesense history.
