A couple of years ago in a thread discussing the longest a light bulb had ever lasted, I mentioned a light bulb in an almost inaccessible hallway of my house that had been used daily since I moved into the house in 1971. Today it burned out. When I took it out of the fixture, there was a quarter-inch of dust on it.
Lets see a compact florescent bulb come even close.
Since there is no question in the OP, this is better suited to MPSIMS.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I have a fluorescent bulb in my basement that I cannot ever recall changing. That would at least be from 1986.
White neon tubes, in my experience, last far longer than any other light source. One of my customers is a sports bar, and they have a sign that has been burning for 18 hours a day, 6 days a week (slightly shorter hours on Sunday during the summer) for twenty five years. One of the elements broke during the most recent of five floods while they have been in this location.
The only way neon suppliers get business servicing neon signs is that they do a deliberately shitty job of connecting the wires from the transformer to the leads of the elements of the sign. Traditionally, they connect them with a light twist, no more than two or three turns. This lets the connection arc and build up carbon. Then they can come “service” the sign (re-twist the wire).
Beer companies won’t put up with this nonsense, and their signs are made using gas-tight crimp connections.
And had you dusted it once a decade or so, it would probably still be going strong.
It’s easy to make something inefficient that has a long lifespan.
I can take any standard incandescent lamp last decades, just by under-volting it by 25%.
(from wikipedia: filament lifetime is approximately proportional to V ^−16)
However, most people would rather have a brighter, more efficient light source that doesn’t last as long.
FWIW, I have a 15W CFL in an outdoor fixture that is on every night from dusk til dawn. It’s so old, I can’t remember when I installed it.
Stole my line. 
The last time I was in the ghost town of Bodie, California, there was a light bulb in a store (I think it was the General Store) that was still burning, although very dimly. Bodie was abandoned back in the early 1930s, I believe, and I saw the light bulb around 1990 or so. The bulb had been burning for around 55 years.
Anyone know if it is still going?
The Thomas Edison home and laboratory in Fort Myers, FL had several of Edison’s original light bulbs that continued to work well into the 1980s; after my father retired, he worked as as tour guide there. Fort Myers used to have a yearly “Festival of Light” honoring Mr. Edison. According to my father, those light bulbs were turned on very briefly at the beginning of said festival and weren’t allowed to operate ‘very long.’ I don’t know how current this info is; my father has been dead about twenty years now and I haven’t lived in Fort Myers in a very long time.
That was a cool read, thanks! We buy identically looking bulbs from here, probably close in apperance to the Edisons LouisB mentions. I’ve not had them long enough to make any claims about their durative capabilities yet. I will say they they provide an amazing soft, warm light that you’ll likely not find in any other bulb and really finish the look of vintage fixtures.
I remmebere visiting the Edison museum in Ft. Myers. The house is indeed lit by the old Edison carbon filament bulbs-most of them are 80+ years old. The carbon filament bulbs will last longer, because they run at a lower temperature than modern tungsten filament bulbs.
There was a firehouse in California that had a carbon bulb burning for something like 90 years-as long as they don’t turn it off, it will probably last for decades more.
That’s Binarydrone’s link in post #4 and #12. Currently, it’s 109.
A question though; I know that for halogen bulbs, at least the ones used as car headlights, that they stress you don’t touch them with your bare hand as the oils from your skin will cause the bulb to burn out quicker. Is this a concern with any other bulb type, ie incandescent or compact fluorescent?
That’s an interesting thought…my personal longest-lasting bulb has been running every day since 1997. It’s the lamp I keep next to my bed and I turn it off and on every single night and have done so since I got it. It’s a touch lamp, and I’ve never touched the bulb.
AFAIK, it is a concern for very small (e.g.: automotive) incandescents.
It is also a problem for fixtures used in theatrical lighting.
haven’t changed bulbs, since buying cfb, one a duece,…
These are both Halogen lamps.
Fingerprints don’t cause the filament to burn out faster, but they can cause localized overheating of the quartz envelope, causing it to fail.
I have seen halogen lamps where the quartz was blown into a bubble due to a fingerprint. This was on a theatre instrument.