There are
actually a number of ancient bulbs around the country
that refuse to die. Pretty neat, anyway.
And I would bet that General Electric, Sylvania, and a few other
concerns have people who study these bulbs to make sure they don't
make any more like them.
I was under the impression that the way to make a bulb last for a good
long time is to under-run it -- to run it off a much lower voltage than
designed. I bet if you took a modern (110V) bulb and powered it off, say,
90V, it would have a long life.
Of course if you do this you get a lot less light per watt of electical
input power.
Photofloods (do you get those in the States?) are the reverse. Bulbs that
are deliberately overrun to give a high light intensity (and higher
colour temperature) than normal bulbs of the same power. The trade-off is
a very short life -- a couple of hours for some of them.
-tony