The humble light bulb, Where would we be without it. It first started out with a chap called Humphry Davy who in 1802 used an electric battery and connected a piece of carbon to it with some wire and bingo, There was light. Although it was more of an arc so bright you couldn’t look at it as in the same way you can’t look at an arc welder welding without the special tinted visor and the light didn’t last very long but we did have electric light. Buy 1840 anther clever chap called Warren De La Rue used a platinum filament and then created a vacuum around it which was much more practical for everyday use. However it was also far to expensive as platinum wasn’t cheap and it was far to expensive to produce commercially. Then finally in 1874 two even cleverer chaps called Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans made their first lamps going back to carbon but this time held in place between two electrodes inside a glass cylinder which was filed with nitrogen. Unfortunately they were unable to commercialize their invention and so it was sold to Thomas Edison in 1878. Edison started developing a practical lamp and filed his first patent for the light bulb on 4th November 1879 although he had patents for other ideas he had been working on before this date and also continued to develop it with new patents until he ended up with a carbonized bamboo filament that could last for as long as 1200 hours. So far, so good.
So we have a product that has made life better for mankind but then mankind thought, How can we make money on this? Now we could make light bulbs and sell them making a small profit, but how do you make a massive profit? Well here comes the grate light bulb conspiracy which is now fairly well known about. You see as time and development went on there is no reason a modern light bulb can’t last for a very long time. In fact by 1924 they were lasting 2500 hours. However, business was bad as people weren’t buying enough. so how do you make people buy more light bulbs. Well by deliberately designing light bulbs to fail after 1000 hours that how. Or what is known as planned obsolescence.
There are some things that last, and look, no lights to fail.
In 1924 a cartel was formed in Genève Switzerland called the Phoebus Cartel which itself set up a group in 1925 called the 1000 hour life committee. A testing facility was set up in Switzerland and all the members of the cartel had to send a batch of their bulbs in every month to be tested. Any company who’s bulbs lasted longer than they should were heavily fined. The end reward being the general public who knew nothing of this secret cartel having to buy more light bulbs hence bigger profits for the light bulb companies. In the first two years of the cartel light bulbs went from lasting 2500 hours to 1500 hours and by 1940 they had reached there goal with the average light bulb only lasting 1000 hours. Not only did the Phoebus cartel work to bring down the lifespan of a light bulb they also worked to drive the prices of light bulbs up, or in modern day words price fixing. So by the late 1930’s the public were paying a lot more for light bulbs that didn’t last as long as the light bulbs made in the early 1920’s. A light bulb was even designed by a company to last 100000 hours but the cartel stopped it and the product wasn’t allowed to make it into the retail stages. I think the worst part of this plan was the hundreds of inventors, scientists and engineers all involved to make the world slightly worse and more expensive, working to make light bulbs more fragile, easier to brake and with a shorter life span. In other words, working to make the rich richer by keeping the average working person buying. Luckily the cartel’s lost their power in 1939 when world war two broke out which must be the only good thing to come out of the war. Although nobody knew about it at the time it does make you wonder if this is just the tip of the iceberg. What have companies got away with that we haven’t found out about and made themselves rich doing? A more recent case in 2003 was the apple ipod which suffered with batteries slowly losing power then dying after only 18 months. Apple also rather conveniently made the price of a new battery so expensive that it was better to just buy a new ipod. The company was taken to court and it was found to be a deliberate act of planned obsolesce which ended with apple extending warranty’s by one year, giving out vouchers to people effected and where appropriate customers had there ipods fixed or replaced free of charge. So the nest time you spend a small fortune on something that doesn’t last long and has no replaceable parts or the parts are so expensive you might as well buy a whole new product. You might want to ask yourself is this planned obsolescence? I often fix things myself, however there are many things I’ve been unable to fix due to a part worth no more than a few pence that is unobtainable, meaning I then have to buy the complete new product. I often think this is a deliberate act to make me spend more money. I also have a few videos on the best work boots and i have continually found that today's boots from top brands, don't last as long as they did twenty years ago. For example i used to ware a very famous British brand of boot and although they were expensive they would typically last around three years. Today, they are still expensive and my new pair started to leek after only five months and were unwearable after six. And i think it all started with the humble light bulb. So do let me know if you've had any experiences with planned obsolescence in the comments, What is the worst company or product? Should company's be more dedicated to making quality goods that make us happy or poor quality goods that make them a much better profit? Or is it are own fault for always asking whats the cheapest price you can do instead of whats the best quality you can do?