How Many People Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb on the Forum?

It only takes one person, If you kept the receipt.....

Sorry if someone else came up with that gem from 'One Foot in the Grave'

Edited By Bernard Wright on 17/02/2021 22:42:46

Back in the days of usenet, there was a tacit agreement that a discussion had run its course at the first mention of Facism, or the accusation 'Nazi'. Sometimes it was bit like 'Mornington Crescent'! Further comments migrated to alt.flame where the game was to be as impolite as possible. It worked quite well - alt.flame was a sort of sandbox in which people could vent their spleen (relatively) harmlessly. Of course in this forum there would have to be Flame (reducing), Flame (oxidising) and all the subtle things between...

Just a 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose' moment prompted by Neil's post.

Robin.

PS - I'm not suggesting that this is a hostile forum - quite the reverse in my experience.

10 members to point out it must have been a cheap Chinese light bulb if it burnt out in the first place. And you'd be better off to scout around boot sales and find a good used British light bulb that with a little bit of fettling should last 105 years like the one above my lathe that has been there since I was an apprentice in James Watt's works.

10 more to point out that most beginners should be able to pick up the finer points of glass blowing to make a new outer glass to replace the genuine Lucas item on the worn British item, and convert their air compressor to a vacuum pump to evacuate it after installation. New filaments can be easily made too of course, using tungsten wire from the scrap box wound around a matchstick former. Once the glass and filament have been replaced, and a new base turned from solid brass with a British Standard Lightbulb Thread, the refurbished British bulb will outlast and outperform anything from China.

Then another 25 members to point out that buying a used British lightbulb at a boot sale comes with no warranty and you are much better off to buy a new Chinese bulb so that when it does not work -- or flickers dimly -- you can send it back and get another one -- which may or may not be just the same. Plus the new bulbs come with a full set of accessories including three and four jaw inserting chucks and a fixed ladder steady to aid installation. Warnings will abound of the amount of wear that can be found on used bulbs and the time and expense of rectifying such wear, compared with the shiny newness of the Chinese bulbs.

10 members will then point out that it takes two grown men and a boy to lift a good solid old British light bulb whereas a Chinese lightbulb can be carried in one's fob pocket and may tend to float away on the breeze if not screwed into its socket tightly enough.

Then another 25 members to tell of how they used their single Chinese mini-lightbulb to illuminate their making of a full-scale working model of the Titanic's main engine so obviously its smaller size than the older British bulbs is no drawback.

To which another 25 will point out that old British lightbulbs salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic are still in use today, providing illumination for the Hadron Collider and the NASA Mars Rover.

At which point one longstanding member who shall remain nameless will post a link to a site that keeps count of the number of electrons gone missing from the Hadron Collider and provides exact dimensions of each one but can only hypothesise the exact location. 25 more members will then debate the quantum possibilities of predicting both the dimension and location of any given particle at any given time.

At which point a further 25 members will point out that time is all relative anyway, or doesn't exist, or is circular, or at least not linear and seems to certainly be in increasingly short supply compared with the much longer hours of their youth.

At which point the OP will reappear after days away, to make his third-ever post on the forum and say "Ooops. Sorry chaps. I meant to ask how many forum members does it take to change a sink drain. Got my terminology mixed up with the wrong YouTube video I watched."

Edited By Hopper on 18/02/2021 06:19:37

I always thought that lightbulbs and other electronic components ran on smoke and if one let the smoke out they failed to work. This is based on experience.

Of course, on this forum the lightbulb followers would be up in arms if the forum software were changed and the lightbulb questions were not displayed with a light grey background with olive green post separators with ads that flicker like a failing lightbulb scampering down the right hand column.

Of course, the discussion might gravitate to why change the lightbulb in the first place?

Not required if one had purchased one of these Worlds longest burning light bulb It still has all the smoke intact.

From recent experience two, one to install the necessary software and one to realise that the bulb was linked to the wrong account. And even then, "Alexa, turn on the light" can have totally unpredictable results depending on which Echo hears you first.

I'm starting to think rewiring the house to the latest edition in order to have all the switches at wheelchair height would have been simpler.

Brian G

Then there's the post from a chap called George who moans about the fact that nobody stocks authentic Victorian bulbs to go with his 1891 Boy's Own Small Dynamo, driven by his 1895 Boy's Own Model Gas Engine, and wonders if anybody on the forum can give him advice on how to make his own.

er... George B.

And there is always at least one helpful Harry who will suggest collecting finest silica sand from Brighton beach and heating it in a homemade furnace powered by leftover chip shop oil to make your own glass for Boys Own bulb.

101 Programmers gave up after they realised it was Hardware and not Software.

Chris.

The main problem is PEBKAS (Problem exists between keyboard and seat). Made a few quid explaining this to pc users , )o

Edited By Danny M2Z on 18/02/2021 17:29:38

I assume we are actually discussing the changing of a lamp

Mike

So you are one of the 15 mentioned in Jimmy's post half way down the first page

Also hope it's been changed by now

I’m guessing (probably wrongly) that Neil actually took his ‘statistics’ from a real thread on the forum?

My suspicion is that this thread may be self referential.

Brian G

Try turning it off and on again. Fixes all computer faults!

Back in the day (1976) when I was a electrical apprentice I was informed by one lecturer that there was no such thing as a light bulb.
They were lamps and bulbs you planted in the garden.

One lesson I never forgot.

Hopper……your post……that was brilliant!

all the best

Derek

.... large, with multiple views.

104 people to reply to comments in those posts (over) quoting the text and fully quoting the pics each time.

57 people to reply to those replies (fully quoting the pics each time)

40 people ........

Edited By Peter Greene 🇨🇦 on 11/03/2022 18:34:07

He was quite wrong, many bulbs are less heavy than others...

Dave

Hopper -

Wonderful!

Especially if the said bulb is for a standard 240 lamp in the UK, for then the Light-Bulb Making and Fitting Committee, Team Leader, Project Manager, et al would suddenly find it won't fit because it should have a British Standard Bayonet fitting, not an Edison Screw-thread!

I used to know a professional electrician who would take us all here to task anyway, for he said one of his apprenticeship college lecturers always insisted on correct terms: Lamp or Luminaire (I think) not Bulb -

Lamps Glow, Bulbs Grow,

was the instructor's mantra!

Well I did a speed read of the thread and missed that one, as an apprentice electrician it was often brought up that lightbulbs are lamps. I hold my hand up as one of the lamp lightbulb pedants but only for the fun value.

Mike