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People had been making wires incandesce since 1761, and plenty of other inventors had demonstrated and even patented various versions of incandescent lights by 1878, when Edison turned his attention to the problem of illumination.

It’s a poignant throwaway line that nonetheless speaks to Petzold’s own doomy romanticism, even if his tightly constructed, rigorously unsentimental movies don’t melt so much as they slowly, brilliantly incandesce.

We were in the courtyard of the Morris Burner Hostel in Reno, Nevada, watching a live feed of a wooden man incandescing 120 miles away.

The molecules incandesce, and burn like true stars with a brilliancy that is often magnificent.

These incandescing orbs are so many points of interrogation suspended above our heads in the inaccessible depths of space....