Also a fan of the reusable Bulb Boss (no longer available) and still have one brand new in package. Am also a fan of something called “The Button”. It was a sticky button that reduced the wattage of a bulb making it last up to 30 times longer. The company went out of business. The Button would reduce a 200 into a 110 watt bulb, 150 into a 90 watt bulb, a hundred into a 58 watt, a 75 into a 40, a 60 into a 33, a 40 into a 22 and a 25 into a 14. A package of three used to cost about 7 or 8 dollars. I put four 150’s (making them 90’s) into my antique chandelier with cut glass globes covering the bulbs and they lasted about ten years. A normal hundred watter would last less then six months, its life being greatly reduced by its being enclosed. But all that was defeated by The Button. I still have about 8 left and after that, we’ll have to fall back on the light dimmer. ‘The Buttons’ were not reusable like The Bulb Boss buttons.

How many of you remember the old “50 GA” made by General Electric, but by some of the other old companies too? It looked like un upside down mushroom and they were lightly tinted green, pink and maybe some other colors, but those were the only two colors I ever saw. Most were 50 watt bubls, but they did make some bigger watt bulbs, too. They were decorative and were, in a sense, the poor man’s chandelier bulb. A lot of the old chandeliers did not have fitters on them (that part of the fixture that enables one to attach a glass shade) and these bulbs looked really cool and did not offend the eye like a bare naked bulb. Personally, I’ve never seen a cooler light bulb in the green tint.

Back in 1996, I rented about a dozen of these bulbs to the production company that made the Robert Altman movie called “Kansas City.” It was a period piece set in the twenties or thirties and they wanted it to look authentic. If you ever see it, watch for the antique chandelier loaded with about five of these bulbs. You see them several times in the film as part of the backdrop. I don’t recommend the film for anything but the bulbs. I picked up a bunch of these in the seventies when I first discovered them. An architectural salvage guy who knew I had them contacted me for the movie production company. They paid me $200 just to use them for a week and they didn’t even turn them on (at least in the movie anyway).

Speaking of Phillips bulbs (going back to the beginning of this discussion) they also made some decorative bulbs back in the early nineties that were colored that were pretty cool. Not real cool, just pretty cool. They were called “hint of peach” or “hint of green” or “hint of yellow” etc. The colors were very nice, but they had that boxy square configuration that Phillips was noted for, but the worst was that they put their name and the wattage in obtrusive black font on the crown of the bulb, catching the eye and thereby subtracting from its beauty. Again, the hint of green and then peach were the best colors. Unfortunately, they only made them a short while.

In the absence of “The Button” being available to save bulb life, all one has to do is use light dimmers.
They can extend the life of an incandescent bulb of from seven to ten years, especially if you don’t peak out the bulbs for long periods of time. I could go on and on. But enough.

http://oikos.com/esb/35/smartlights.html