It was such a bright idea that it became a universal symbol for the bright idea.

We refer, of course, to the simple light bulb, that iconic shape that appeared above the head of countless cartoon characters for decades.

As of the first of this year, the most popular light bulbs in the country – the 40- and 60-watters – will no longer be made, having succumbed to the push to make our lighting more energy efficient. When the last one disappears from the shelf sometime this year, that’ll be it for most such bulbs. The party’s over.

It’s been a heck of a run for the traditional light bulb, which owes its presence in the 21st century to Thomas Edison’s innovation in 1879. He didn’t invent the concept of artificial lighting, but he was the first to come up with a way to make artificial lighting practical and dependable.

The beginning of the end for the incandescent bulb came in 2007, when President George W. Bush signed a law that required light bulbs sold in America to meet certain minimum efficiency standards. That foreshadowed the end of a product that generated far more heat than light. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only about 10 percent of the electricity used by incandescents went to create light.

We’ve been doing without the 75- and 100-watt incandescent bulbs for a few years now, getting by with 60s and 40s, but those are about to go dark, too.

Changing a light bulb has also come to stand, over the years, for simplicity itself, as in the joke about “How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?” (The answer, according to Google, is: “Only one; but first, they have to rewire the entire building.”)

The significance of that particular line of jokes may dim over time, as the bulb industry itself becomes more complex.

For decades, the old-fashioned bulb dominated, which made it simple for consumers. Just as Henry Ford said of his early cars that “you can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s black,” light bulb shoppers for decades only had to choose between incandescent and incandescent.

Now, consumers face an array of choices about light bulb types and how much efficiency they want to pay for: Halogen bulbs use about 20 percent less energy than traditional bulbs. LED bulbs are at the other end of the efficiency spectrum, using about 80 percent less energy than incandescents, but they cost a lot more, too. In the middle – from an efficiency standpoint, at least – are compact fluorescent lights, which have been around for a while and are often recognizable from their signature curly-cue shapes.

Old habits die hard, it seems, and the light bulb is no exception. According to the EPA, “there are 4 billion light bulb sockets in the U.S., and more than 3 billion of them still use the standard incandescent technology that hasn’t changed much in 125 years.”

Consumers have been slow to change for a few reasons, including the presence of small amounts of mercury in CFLs. That has raised some concerns about the consequences of breakage and disposal safety issues. People also have expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of light emitted by the new bulbs, and their higher costs haven’t encourage people to switch, either.

Eventually, though, we’ll all have to make the change, and while some of us may feel like we’re stumbling around in the dark without our incandescent light bulbs, new technology will, inevitably, light the way.

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