Just a Light Bulb

I read a lot. Whether that is a vice or a hobby depends on whom you ask.

For me, the perfect place to read is the small couch in my living room, beside an old floor standing lamp. A little side table holds a cup of hot tea whenever I feel like sipping it and lingering over a good book. My phone rests there too, close enough to answer a call if needed, but far enough away that it does not constantly demand my attention. Sometimes, I even keep a paper notebook (the irony that I had to mention paper before the word notebook, and the fact that I am typing it out on a computer that many people call notebook) and a pen, just to pen down my thoughts is something interesting comes to my mind while reading.

Recently, as I sat there reading, I found myself looking at the light around me. The book didn’t hold my interest much and so various thoughts started floating in my mind. It occurred to me that almost every bulb in my home is now an LED. They do produce a pleasant warm glow (since I opted for that), but they do something an old incandescent bulb never did. They flicker.

The flicker is so rapid that our eyes perceive it as a steady light. Many high quality LEDs have reduced this effect significantly, yet the principle remains the same. They work by switching on and off at remarkable speed. An incandescent bulb from years gone by works differently. The ‘bulb’ as it is still called here, simply heats a filament until it glows producing light. It works rather inefficiently and a fair amount of heat is also generated along with it.

So I replaced the LED bulb in my reading lamp with an old fashioned incandescent bulb. The true ‘bulb’ from my way of thinking.

I cannot honestly say that the LED ever caused me discomfort. Nor can I claim that I consciously noticed its flicker. The change is almost entirely psychological. Yet there is something quietly reassuring about knowing that the light illuminating the pages of my book is continuous rather than pulsed. It feels simpler and realistic. Reading beneath an LED, if one thinks about it, is a little like watching a film. The page is illuminated in rapid pulses, so quickly that the brain blends them into what appears to be constant light. An incandescent bulb feels different. It is closer to standing outdoors beneath the sun on a clear day. The intensity is far lower, of course, but the character of the light feels more analogue. More grounded. More natural.

There is, naturally, a price to pay for this preference. The LED bulb consumed around four watts of electricity. The incandescent bulb draws about sixty. By modern standards it is spectacularly inefficient. Most of that extra energy does not become light. It becomes heat. But then I live in the mountains, where much of the year is cold, and heat is usually welcome. In that setting, the so called wasted energy is not entirely wasted. It contributes, however modestly, to warming the room. Yes, you may laugh at the thought but it’s quite true. If my little reading corner ends up even the tiniest fraction of a degree warmer, I consider that a small bonus rather than a loss.

Perhaps none of this makes much practical sense. Modern LEDs are a better tech, by almost every measurable standard. They are efficient, long lasting, easy on pocket in the long run, and remarkably capable. Yet, sometimes, it’s better to fall back on old ways and feel the warmth.

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