Why Your Light Bulbs Are Designed to Fail

The Phoebus cartel: in 1924 Osram, Philips and General Electric secretly limited light bulbs to 1,000 hours and fined factories whose bulbs lasted longer. An early case of planned obsolescence. In a fire station in California, a light bulb has been burning since 1901. The one in your kitchen won't see its first birthday. That isn't an accident, and for fifteen years it was written down, signed and enforced. 0:00 The bulb in the fire station 0:55 Twelve hundred hours 2:01 Two days before Christmas 2:54 The committee 4:28 The testing room 5:37 The case for the defence 6:39 A word for it 7:40 Nobody told you 8:49 The number Sources: Krajewski, M. (2014). The great lightbulb conspiracy. IEEE Spectrum, 24 September 2014. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-l... United States v. General Electric Co., 82 F. Supp. 753 (D.N.J. 1949). Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission (1951). Report on the Supply of Electric Lamps (HC 287). London: HMSO. London, B. (1932). Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence. New York: self-published. Poole, J. (2017). iPhone performance and battery age. Geekbench Blog, 18 December 2017. https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/1... Loi n° 2015-992 du 17 août 2015 relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte, article 99. Journal officiel de la République française. Library of Congress (2020). France: Watchdog agency fines Apple for deceitful practice. Global Legal Monitor, 28 February 2020. Signify (2023). Good for the planet and wallets: Signify introduces Philips Ultra Efficient LED bulbs. Press release, 12 April 2023. U.S. Department of Energy. The history of the light bulb. https://www.energy.gov/articles/histo... #plannedobsolescence #lightbulb #phoebuscartel #history #explained