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• Regular incandescents won't consume any electricity if the bulb is dead, since there's no continuous path for the current to take. It's just like an open switch. With CFLs and LEDs, it depends on why the bulb burned out, but in general they will consume some amount of electricity even when burned out.

• They appear in a section about "Byron the Bulb," a plucky talking light bulb who never burns out and becomes a target of the the cartel. While Pynchon was obviously writing fiction here-lights bulbs don't talk, not even famous ones hanging in California fire stations-the Phoebus Cartel was very much real.

• The invention of the light bulb changed the world in many ways, including facilitating the creation of large power grids, changing the social and economic structure of society and bringing other appliances into the home. Interior lighting changed the structure of society, allowing activities to extend into the night.

The Eternal Light is currently 109 years old and was first turned on in September 21, 1908 by Barry Burke, a stage hand at the Byers Opera House. Before the Eternal Light lost the title in the 1970s to the Centennial Light, it was the oldest burning light bulb in the world according to Guinness World Records.

Regular incandescents won't consume any electricity if the bulb is dead, since there's no continuous path for the current to take. It's just like an open switch. With CFLs and LEDs, it depends on why the bulb burned out, but in general they will consume some amount of electricity even when burned out.

They appear in a section about "Byron the Bulb," a plucky talking light bulb who never burns out and becomes a target of the the cartel. While Pynchon was obviously writing fiction here-lights bulbs don't talk, not even famous ones hanging in California fire stations-the Phoebus Cartel was very much real.

The invention of the light bulb changed the world in many ways, including facilitating the creation of large power grids, changing the social and economic structure of society and bringing other appliances into the home. Interior lighting changed the structure of society, allowing activities to extend into the night.