Complex Numbers

Let there be LIGHT!

So I ran across this interesting little tidbit:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8NDHKEG0.htm

The Australian government on Tuesday announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs across the country...

In incandescent light bulbs, perfected for mass use by Thomas A. Edison in the late 19th century, electricity flows through a filament to create light. Much of the energy, however, is wasted in the form of heat.

Australia is not the only place looking to replace them with fluorescent lighting, which is more efficient and longer lasting.

In incandescent light bulbs, perfected for mass use by Thomas A. Edison in the late 19th century, electricity flows through a filament to create light. Much of the energy, however, is wasted in the form of heat.

Note how Edison is mentioned by name as the "perfector" of incandescent light bulbs. Note also how the inventor (or perfector) of flourescent lights isn't even mentioned in passing in the story.

This isn't new. The two of them had a battle about electric current transmission, too. Edison was sure DC power was the answer. So what if there was no way, at the time, to send DC more than a few blocks without significant losses from resistance? It was the way things would be because, by damn, Edison said so! Meanwhile, the other guy found a way to send power over far vaster distances: AC transmission, enabling the power source to be significantly removed from the user. Hence, a power plant at Niagara Falls was able to supply power to New York City.

There's a statue of him on Goat Island, between Niagara's Falls. Goat Island is ephemeral; erosion will eventually push the falls upstream and make the island, and presumably the statue, disappear.

Same guy invented radio. Marconi got the popular credit, but the patent went to Nikola Tesla.

It's said that Tesla refused a Nobel prize when he found that he'd have to share it with Edison.

And now, if the trend is indeed to phase out (pun intended) incandescent bulbs in favor of flourescents... well, to me it represents the final triumph of Tesla over his blustering rival, Edison. Let there be light - cheap, clean, efficient light!

Now if they can only make them a bit less industrial-looking...