12 ms·
Oxford Electric Bell
- pflanze 12y agoSee also (different source about the same bell): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995422
- Spooky23 12y agoI've always found things like this amazing. The "Centennial Light" is a lightbulb that has been in near-continuous operation for 113 years! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light
- serf 12y agoI had known about that, but I never had realized until re-reading that article that it now runs at 4 watts rather than the original 60 watts. I'm still impressed totally, but I must say that that factor dampened it a bit for me. If planned obsolescence is really non-existent in that industry one wonders how long a modern low-wattage bulb built for endurance could potentially last.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y agoA modern low-wattage bulb built for endurance could potentially last roughly forever. And during that time turn so much electricity into heat that you'd be asking for shorter-lived higher-temperature bulbs to save on energy costs. With normal incandescent lighbulbs, electricity is about 95% of the costs, so if you doubled the lifetime of those bulbs, the most you could save would be about 2.5% of total costs, if the lower operating temperature of long-lasting bulbs didn't increase the electricity needed for the same brightness, which practically means that you probably would pay more overall.
- qwerta 12y ago> A modern low-wattage bulb built for endurance I do not think so. LED on its own sure, but most bulbs also have power converter and other parts prone to failure.
- gambiting 12y agoI think he meant traditional, carbon-filament lightbulb, manufactured to modern standards. If the filament used was thick enough, it would work for hundreds of years, no problem.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 12y agoelectricity is about 95% of the costs Really depends on the application. For difficult-to-change bulbs (in high or remote locations), longevity can be a significant factor. It's one thing to replace the bulb in a table lamp, another on a remote high tower or deep within an industrial plant in a hostile environment. Or on a spacecraft.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoThe wiki also lists it being shut off without specifying the reasons. "The fire department says that the bulb is at least 113 years old and has been turned off only a handful of times." I really doubt there's anywhere in the US where power has run uninterrupted for 100+ years. Even the use of backup generators is fairly modern and those fail or run out of fuel as well. Neat little thing, but I think back then they hand-wound the filament using much stronger and thicker (and with more resistance) wire than what we use today. Or used, considering that style of lightbulb is more or less dead. Dunno, I'm not impressed by this the same way I am by the pitch experiment or the ever-ringing bell.
- katbyte 12y agoI've often heard that light bulbs are not manufactured to as high standards as they could be. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy/ But i have no idea how much truth there is to it.
- Spooky23 12y agoI don't think it's a conspiracy, it's just cutting costs of a commodity to meet expected lifespans. If you buy 130 volt-rated bulbs (120V is typical), they are built to a better standard and can survive exposure to poor quality electric service. It's one of those things not taken into account by the cargo-cult conversion to CFL and LED -- the electronics in these bulbs are built for good conditions. Try running the newer bulbs for extended periods off of portable generators.
- Spooky23 12y agoDepends on where. Some smaller cities have municipal electricity that pretty much always works (Holyoke, MA is the one that comes to mind). Even in regional blackouts, there are a few Upstate NY towns that never go out... they can isolate themselves from the grid when necessary, and draw from the grid when they have issues. I grew up in the boroughs of NYC, and don't recall ever having a power outage in those years. I think it flickered during a hurricane in the 80's, but never actually went out. Where I live now (Upstate NY), forget it... even after eviscerating the street trees, any significant gust of wind has a probability of taking out power. The state no longer effectively regulates the utilities -- the transformer on my street blew up this past winter, and per the lineman had markings indicating that it was made in the mid 1960s.
- th0ma5 12y agoMade in my hometown! Was always an inspiration to me, as well as a lesson in planned obsolescence.
- jankeromnes 12y agothat has
- pooper 12y agothank you. I can understand (not agree with but understand) some people insisting on writing name of companies with plural verbs like Google are and Microsoft have but a battery bell is a singular word no matter which way you slice and dice.
- josai 12y agoTo be fair, judging by previous comments, it's likely the writer is not a native english speaker. English grammar is hard, and people make mistakes. I for one would like HN to be an inclusive international community, and that means not jumping down people's throats just because their english is not 100%. I'd like to see any of us native english speakers try to submit something to a foreign language site...
- kamjam 12y agoWhilst I agree with your sentiments, a 2 word comment really is useless, not matter how great their English might be... rather than a "that's amazing!" type comment, a simple upvote on the original article would suffice, kind of like discouraging "Me too!" comments on Stackoverflow, it doesn't add much to the discussion. Although having said that, my initial thought was the OP had hit return too early and not realised...
- josai 12y agoI wasn't talking about the grandparent comment, I was defending the submitter! The GP's two word comment, while correct, is too reddit for my taste (nothing against reddit - both sites have their place).
- ern 12y agoBritish English seems to prefer treat entities like companies as plurals, while the rest of the English-speaking world seems to treat them as singular. Lots of discussion on this point can be found on Google.
- stuaxo 12y agoIt is a shame they don't have a video or an animated gif of this dynamic object.
- marvin 12y agoYou can find it on YouTube. It doesn't ring very loudly, but I suppose that would be a requirement for constant 174-year operation.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- aylons 12y agoHere it goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dx1-f8xQio&feature=kp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dx1-f8xQio&feature=kp Not as dynamic as one would expect, though. Edit: Reproduction, easier to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKwSHtQwzD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKwSHtQwzD8
- thrillscience 12y agoHere's a better video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsBak0oCgdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsBak0oCgdY
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoStrange the article seems compelled to mention that its not an example of perpetual motion. Why not also say its not magic, nor controlled by the gods?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- corin_ 12y agoSimply because there are far more people who are likely to forget the rules of science and think "wow, 174 years, it keeps going forever!" than people who think "wow, 174 years, must be magic"
- serf 12y agoI agree with you, but perhaps it's just to prevent those who believe in such things from citing this example as evidence. The world has enough youtube videos of people claiming their homebrew magnet contraption is a perpetual motion machine, one hopes the author is simply trying to stymie that trend.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoDo you not use the internet? Between the Tesla conspiracy theorirsts "OMG Tesla discovered free energy thus Westinghouse had him killed" and the constant rebadging of "cold fusion" I think these disclaimers are warranted.
- userbinator 12y agoAs the article mentions, the battery is likely a Zamboni pile, which has an extremely high internal resistance (i.e. can only supply very low currents) but is made for high voltage, electrostatic applications like this bell. That's why it lasted so long - modern battery chemistries have much lower internal resistance, and self-discharge would mean it being completely depleted in much less time. The battery in this bell has such high internal resistance that the self-discharge is many orders of magnitude less. The characteristics of these batteries are different enough that you'll find lots of claims of "perpetual motion" on the Internet from people who have made them and found how long they can last when powering low-current loads like LEDs!
- mrfusion 12y agoI'm really confused how an electrostatic battery would get charged? Is there a limit to how much energy can be stored in such a way? It seems like it might be a promising avenue for new battery research, no? Are there major limitations I'm not seeing?
- pjc50 12y agoIt's not an electrostatic battery. It's a perfectly normal non-rechargeable battery made of a very large number of thin cells; it provides high voltage but almost no current. However it also has a very low self-discharge, which would be a problem for almost any "wet" cell in this situation. One nanoampere for 100 years is a very small number of amp-hours.
- VLM 12y agoYou can engineering estimate it in your head as one kilo-day per year and one kilo-hour in a century, and a nano 1e-9 is a kilo-kilo-kilo so to less than one sig fig its of the order of a thousandth of an amphour per century. Thermal noise is around a nanovolt per Hz at 50 ohms and room temp (Very roughly) so it would be a trick to use this power level to do much electronically, like generate a measurable radio signal. A much larger battery might be able to power a (edited: continuous) radio beacon.
- VLM 12y agoIts an electrochemical battery like any other. In fact silver-zinc chemistry (like a hearing aid) is not all that unusual for this type of dry cell. However the internal resistance from using paper as an "electrolyte" is incredibly high. So the weight or volume per power output ratio is extremely bad compared to anything. Even direct radio isotope batteries are worse. Radio isotope RTGs are worse. The "electrostatic" comes from the engineering model where you can pretty much treat it like a magic leyden jar that charges itself. A self charging high voltage capacitor of sorts.
- tokenadult 12y agoFrom the lede of this Wikipedia article: "which has run almost continuously ever since, apart from occasional short interruptions caused by high humidity." Well, that's not the same as "have not stopped," or "has not stopped." The submission headline here is an exaggeration.
- devb 12y agoThank you for pointing out this major issue.
- Avshalom 12y agoUntil one of those interruptions is 174 years long the title is completely accurate.
- tokenadult 12y agoCould you explain that, please? Hacker News has a policy of preferring that articles are submitted with their original title[1] (which was manifestly NOT done here), and to me the article is a lot less interesting than its submission title promises. I am a Wikipedian, and once in a great while I see an article on Wikipedia that is actually well written enough to be worth submitting to Hacker News, a community of thoughtful discussion that prizes submissions that "gratif[y] one's intellectual curiosity." But most submissions from Wikipedia to Hacker News, and especially the submissions that are submitted with heavily altered titles, don't gratify anyone's intellectual curiosity so much as raise all kinds of questions about incomplete research or writing in the original underlying Wikipedia article. Here, the description appears to be of a very low-energy system that occasionally halts entirely and may not really be doing anything very remarkable. It's hard to tell how the energy flows or steadiness of motion in this system compare to other electro-mechanical systems that just weren't made quite as long ago, and that weren't judged by such relaxed standards. [1] "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Avshalom 12y ago
- cowbell 12y agoI find the last part amusing: "The Oxford Electric Bell does not demonstrate perpetual motion. The bell will eventually stop when the dry piles are depleted of charge" Yes, and the Earth revolving around the Sun is not perpetual motion, despite the fact that it has been happening for billions of years and will continue to happen for billions more. Score one more for the pendants! :D
- dragonwriter 12y agoIts not pedantry. The significant thing about "perpetual motion" is how it would violate (and, hence, disprove) what are currently understood, on very strong evidence, to be physical laws. So, its a pretty key distinction.
- thekevan 12y agoThat part got me as well. Sure it isn't technically perpetual motion but I wonder if maybe it could be considered "near perpetual" or "relatively perpetual" from a selfish human point of view. So if motion lasts longer than your lifetime, doesn't it seem like perpetual motion to you? Personally, when I think of perpetual motion, the first thing that comes to mind is using it to power a generator. In that context, if something could produce electricity for decades without being refueled or even attended to, aren't we moving toward and/or operating with a realm that feels like perpetual motion--even if it is only from our self centered point of view? Granted, this is sort of like if someone is in your field of view and then steps behind a tree that obscures your view of them, you can say they are invisible to you. Though it isn't exactly true to say they have gained the power of invisibility, you labeling them as being invisible is a self centered and relative statement. So as self centered humans, from our point of view any motion which lasts years or even decades--and could be harnessed--could seem sort "effectively perpetual" to us, even though it is nowhere near actually perpetual. (Yes, this theory ignores that fact that that generator's output would indeed be ridiculously low, probably close to unmeasurable--the important part is that if we have motion, we assume we can generate electricity. And yes, even if you could make this happen, it may take thousands or even millions of these together just to power an LED. I was probably prompted of this thought because of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hwLHdBTQ7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hwLHdBTQ7s)
- andmarios 12y agoI have a Casio calculator (fx-100s) that still goes strong on its original battery since I bought it, 18 years ago! I use it a few times every week.
- batmansbelt 12y agoIt might be solar powered.
- andmarios 12y agoNo, it only has an AA battery. I also have a remote control from a Sharp radio system which still works after 24 years with its original batteries! But this one is used very rarely, say 2-3 times every year.
- logicallee 12y agomaybe someone else uses it too and replaced the aa battery? Maybe you replaced it but don't remember?
- andmarios 12y agoNo because they both have these japanese batteries that most japanese electronics come with but you can't find them anywhere in the stores. If someone had replaced them, it would be with a known brand. Besides the calculator is always on my home office and I live alone. I was very surprised too when I found out about a year ago.
- lisper 12y agoHeh, I have a Casio EL-5813 that I got in 1980 that still is still running on its original batteries!