Content-Type: text/shitpost

This video is an unboxing of a 20,000-watt incandescent light bulb. (“It doesn't have a filament in it, it has eight garage door springs.”) My question: why was this bulb manufactured in the first place? What are the applications?

If you need that much light, even before LEDs, you would probably use mercury-vapor or metal halide lamps, which draw much less power and probably lasted a lot longer. So what's this for?

Also, I remember seeing in a museum an even larger incandescent bulb, touted as the largest ever made. Maybe at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry? Does this ring a bell for anyone else?

Twitter says they're going to encourage their programmers to replace the term “dummy value” with “placeholder value” and now I can hardly wait for the chance to refer to someone as a “placeholder value”.