Centennial Light Bulb

The Centennial Light is a 4 watt, hand blown, carbon filament, common light bulb that was manufactured in Shelby, Ohio by the Shelby Electric Company in the late 1890s; many just like it still exist and can be found functioning.

The cult of the oldest working light bulb flashed into prominence in 1970, when The Guinness Book of World Records listed a lamp in Forth Worth, Texas, as the world's "most durable."

The Guinness Book, it turned out, was wrong, and it even gave the wrong age of the bulb that it honored. But its report had useful consequences. It spurred the backers of another ancient bulb, which hung in a fire station in Livermore, California, to begin investigating its history. They passed along what they found to Guinness, and Guinness, to its credit, changed its listing. In 1973 the Livermore lamp was crowned as the new champ -- the world's oldest known working light bulb -- and it has remained so ever since.