lightbulb lament

Behold one of the best lightbulbs I've ever purchased: The Philips IQ, which is basically a standard incandescent bulb, except that it happens to contain a special application-specific integrated circuit that automatically turns the bulb off after 15 minutes of use. (There is a way to override this behaviour to keep it on constantly: toggle the switch before turning it on. Exactly how many toggle flips in toto are involved in this entire procedure? * Just flip it.)

While compact fluorescent bulbs have been getting a lot of attention among those who wish to reduce their carbon footprint, they contain mercury and therefore need extra care when it comes time to dispose of them. This incandescent "Smart Bulb", on the other hand, does not contain mercury. It may suck more juice while it's on than the compact fluorescent, but nothing consumes less electricity than something that is off. This makes it perfect for places like closets and basement stairwells where people forget to switch off the lights. (Of course you never forget to turn the lights off...but how about everyone else you live with?) But really you could use these anywhere. They even have the courtesy to give you a 2-minute warning (by flashing a couple of times) before they switch themselves off. And, like I said, an extra toggle will set it to stay on constantly.

The Smart Bulb has another advantage over compact fluorescents: they have the most amazing lifetime. Incandescent bulbs often only last for one thousand hours of operation (or less), but if you're spending that lifetime in 15-minute chunks you can stretch that out for years. The fledgling conspiracy-theorist within me suspects that this is the reason that these bulbs have disappeared from the market.

That's right: disappeared. Last year I went out to buy more, and discovered that no stores carried them anymore. I pointed my web browser at the problem, and discovered that I'm not the only one who would like to buy more of them. Forum threads like this one were easy to find back then. Note how that one mentions another product, called a "Bulb Boss", that screws into your light socket, and a regular bulb into it, that converts any bulb into an auto-off bulb.

Same technology. But it's gone too. The manufacturer's website has been taken down, and when I tried to call them last year their voicemail box was so full that I couldn't leave a message. It's hard to find out more about them. The company that did the branding campaign still touts their work, you can still find an old Wired Fetish article from 1997, and even a PDF about how the company had plans to use their special high-temperature ceramic integrated circuit technology to make better fluorescent lamps, but it all appears to be dead now.

All that appears to be left of the Beacon Lighting is the net-dot-residue left in archive.org's Wayback Machine. Reading their "about page" shows that they focused their technology on increasing the lifetime of the bulb. Did someone get paid to retire to a tropical island?