The Man Who Went To War Over A Lightbulb

A surprisingly long post about a man most people have never heard of.

ChatGPT produced this after I asked for an image of a man holding a lightbulb and a fish.

In 1970, the Guinness Book of World Records claimed that a lightbulb in Texas was the most durable lightbulb of all time. It had been burning in Fort Worth’s Byers Opera House (later the Paris Theater) since 1908. The designation caught the attention of the Livermore Fire Department in California, which wrote to Guinness and said, “Actually, our lightbulb has been burning since 1901.” After an investigation, Guinness agreed and gave them the title.

The Livermore lightbulb

Both of these lightbulbs are still in the Guinness Book of World Records and, miraculously, are still burning.¹

After the Livermore lightbulb dethroned the Fort Worth lightbulb in 1972, a third claimant for the crown emerged.

Jack Gasnick was a World War II veteran who inherited a hardware shop on 2nd Avenue in NYC from his father. He claimed that the lightbulb above his store’s backdoor had been installed by his dad in 1912 and had been on constantly ever since, save for citywide power outages. He further claimed that his beloved lightbulb was a real workhorse, not just some novelty dim lightbulb sitting in a museum.

Guinness, however, pointed out that 1901 came before 1912, so the Livermore lightbulb was still the oldest. This incensed Gasnick, who was quite sure his lightbulb was the oldest. Unsatisfied with having the third-oldest continuously burning lightbulb, Gasnick took his war against the Livermore bulb to the newspapers.

Gasnick’s store way back in the olden times.

He wrote a letter to Dear Abby claiming that the Livermore lightbulb had burned out and was no longer the oldest. This was fake news. The Livermore bulb continued to burn. This greatly harmed Gasnick’s credibility with Dear Abby.

He then did what all people do when their precious lightbulb is denied its honor: he became a conspiracy theorist.

Gasnick wrote a letter to Guinness demanding a formal investigation into the Livermore lightbulb. He claimed there were reasons to doubt its authenticity: The bulb wasn’t cloudy enough, and the socket should be too hot to touch!

Guinness eventually agreed to investigate these suspicions. I can find no articles detailing their findings, but the Livermore bulb is still in the Guinness World Records, so presumably, they disagreed with Gasnick.²

Articles about Gasnick’s problems with the lightbulbs stop appearing in the mid-1980s, when he appears to have tossed in the towel. I found myself very curious about this Gasnick fellow, however. What sort of man feels so strongly about his lightbulb that he wages a PR campaign against another lightbulb?

It turns out, Jack Gasnick was a fascinating guy.