The Lights They Are A-Changin’

I was catching up on some NPR podcasts this weekend and stumbled across a fascinating episode of On Point from a few weeks back about the mandated death of incandescent lighting at the end of this year. In the hour-long episode — which draws its inspiration from the August cover story in Wired, “The Future of Light is the LED” — host Tom Ashbrook and guests Dan Koeppel (author of the aforementioned Wired story), Robert Friedel (professor of History of Technology & Science at University of Maryland and author of Edison’s Electric Light: The Art of Invention), and Brett Sharenow (CFO & CSO of Switch Lighting) lead a lively discussion on the history of lighting; the phase-out of incandescents; incandescent hoarders; the failure of compact fluorescents as an economically and environmentally sound replacement; the cost and functionality of LEDs; the issue of dimming (of particular interest to Home Tech junkies); and of course the tumultuous political debate surrounding this difficult switch-over.

It’s a frank, fascinating, and informative discussion, so if you’ve got a spare hour, check it out at OnPointRadio.org (unfortunately, I didn’t catch this one in time for it to still be available on the iTunes store for non-subscribers).

Via: [On Point]

(Image courtesy of Wired)