Burning Since 1901: 12 Machines Still Working After a Century, Including a Light Bulb

Guinness World Records lists the bulb in Fire Station 6 in Livermore, California, as the longest-burning light bulb. It has been burning since it was installed in 1901. The bulb was blown by hand, it has been left on 24 hours a day to light the fire engines at night, and by 2010 it was running at only about 4 watts.

On June 6, 2026, its keepers threw it a 125th birthday party, and people sang “Happy Birthday” to a light bulb. A webcam lets anyone check that it’s still on.

Salisbury Cathedral in England is home to the world’s oldest working mechanical clock, built in 1386. It has no face at all: it was designed only to strike the hours, and it runs on falling weights that have to be wound up.

In 1884 it was replaced with a newer clock and forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1929. It was restored to its original condition in 1956. Today, guides unlock the striking mechanism so visitors can hear it sound the way it did in the 14th century.

The Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Spain, has worked as a lighthouse since the late 1st century A.D., according to UNESCO.

It rises 180 feet on a rock above the harbor, and about 110 feet of it is the original Roman masonry, wrapped in an 18th-century restoration. UNESCO calls it the only fully preserved Roman lighthouse that is still used to signal to ships.

In a glass case near the entrance to Oxford University’s Clarendon Laboratory, a pair of bells has been ringing since about 1840. The label, in the handwriting of a 19th-century physics professor, says “Set up in 1840,” and a later note suggests it may be 15 years older.

A tiny metal ball about 4 millimeters across bounces between the two bells about twice a second, powered by two “dry piles” sealed in sulfur. So far they have rung on the order of 10 billion times. Nobody knows exactly what’s inside the piles; the department says it “remains a matter for conjecture.” And you can’t hear it: the ringing is muffled.

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by John A. Roebling, began in 1869 and finished in 1883. At the time, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world.

More than 140 years later, it still carries five lanes of cars, a promenade for walkers and a bike path. In 2024, an average day saw 103,051 vehicles, 28,845 pedestrians and 5,504 cyclists cross over the East River.

Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn is a train that hangs beneath a steel track over the Wupper River. Its first section opened to passengers on March 1, 1901, so this year it turned 125. One station alone, Döppersberg, is used by about 16,000 passengers a day.

Its most famous passenger was Tuffi, a young circus elephant. On July 21, 1950, during a ride to promote the circus, she jumped out of a moving car into the river and was unharmed. Nobody managed to photograph the moment; the famous postcard of her falling is a photo montage.

Marcus Agrippa finished the Aqua Virgo in 19 B.C., paying for it himself. According to legend, a young girl showed the spring to thirsty Romans, which is how it got its name, Virgo, “maiden.”

More than 2,000 years later, it is the only ancient aqueduct still working in Rome, and it ends at the Trevi Fountain. Two reliefs on the fountain tell its story: one shows the girl pointing out the spring, the other shows Agrippa supervising the construction.

San Francisco was the city that first launched cars pulled along by cables running beneath the street, and the first one ran in 1873. The cars have no engines of their own: each one grips a cable that keeps moving in a slot under the street.

More than 150 years later, three lines still run, two from Powell and Market and one from California and Market. The system was named a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire made its first trip on July 3, 1869, and it calls itself the first cog railway in the world. A gear on the train meshes with a toothed rail, a bit like a bicycle sprocket and chain, so it can climb grades too steep for normal wheels.

The trains still climb to the 6,288-foot summit. Most now run on biodiesel, but the railway keeps a pair of coal-fired steam engines for summer and fall, and both are well over 100 years old. Their boilers are built on a slant to stay level on the mountain.

The Flying Horse Carousel in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, dates to about 1876 and is a National Historic Landmark. Its wooden horses don’t sit on poles. They hang by chains from wooden arms, so when the carousel picks up speed, they swing outward and seem to fly.

It is believed to be the oldest carousel of its kind still running in the United States, and a low picket fence around it keeps people out of the way of the flying horses.

Guinness World Records says Bakken, in Klampenborg north of Copenhagen, opened in 1583 and is the oldest operating amusement park in the world.

It grew out of the pleasure gardens of the Middle Ages, and it is the only one of them that survived. Today it has more than 150 attractions, including a wooden roller coaster from 1932.

Prague’s astronomical clock was built in 1410 by Mikuláš of Kadaň and perfected at the end of the 15th century by Master Hanuš. It sits on the south side of the Old Town Hall tower.

In 1865 it stopped, and there was talk of removing it. The Prague watchmaker Ludvík Hainz repaired the mechanism and became its caretaker, and his descendants carried on the job. The painted calendar dial was added the same year, and mechanical figures still appear in its windows every hour from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.