The Great Light Bulb Conspiracy

In
a dim corner of Fire Station #6 in Livermore California hangs a
truly extraordinary object…a lightbulb. But this is no ordinary
lightbulb. First installed in 1901, it has been burning almost
continuously ever since, having only been switched off a handful of
times in nearly 120 years. The Livermore Centennial Bulb has become
something of a local celebrity, with the city throwing it a
birthday party in 2001 attended by over 1000 people. The bulb even
has its own dedicated webcam so that anyone in the world can
confirm that it is indeed still shining its light upon the
world.

The specific model of the Livermore Centennial Light was
invented by Frenchman Adolphe Chaillet in 1897 and manufactured by
the Shelby Electric Works in Shelby, Ohio shortly thereafter.
According to Chaillet’s patent, improvements introduced by his bulb
design include a thick, square-cut tungsten filament shorter and
more durable than previous models and a flattened bulb head that
projects more light downward when installed in a ceiling fixture.
Apparently an extremely durable design, the Centennial Light isn’t
the only surviving bulb of this construction, simply the oldest,
though many others of the same design are close.

In more modern times, while incandescent bulbs have largely been
replaced by compact fluorescent and LED lights, the extreme
longevity of the Livermore Bulb design can make one wonder: why
don’t today’s lightbulbs last anywhere near as long? Amazingly, the
answer lies not in the complex and inscrutable interplay of
economic forces but rather in a bona fide dark conspiracy: the
Phoebus Cartel.

The early 1920s was both a great and terrible time to be a
lightbulb manufacturer,  as the ongoing electrification of the
world saw consumers buying electrical appliances like lightbulbs at
an unprecedented rate. But this boom came at a price, as hundreds
of smaller lightbulb manufacturers popped up around the world,
increasing competition and decreasing the market share for any one
company. Furthermore, lightbulb technology had reached a point
where some bulbs lasted up to 2500 hours, limiting the number of
replacements a consumer would have to buy in a lifetime. These
developments proved disastrous for manufacturers like German firm
Osram, which saw its sales plummet by more than 55% between 1922
and 1923. Seeking to stabilize the market and ensure reliable
long-term profits, on Christmas Eve 1924 the head of Osram, Wilhelm
Meinhardt, brought together the world’s largest light bulb
manufacturers – including the Netherland’s Philips, the UK’s
Associated Electrical Industries, France’s Compagnie des Lampes,
China Edison, Tokyo Electric, and General Electric’s Brazilian and
Mexican subsidiaries – to form a Cartel that came to be known as
the Phoebus group.

The stated aim of Phoebus was to:

[secure] the cooperation of all parties to the agreement,
ensuring the advantageous exploitation of their manufacturing
capabilities in the production of lamps, ensuring and maintaining a
uniformly high quality, increasing the effectiveness of electric
lighting and increasing light use to the advantage of the
consumer.

But in practice the group’s activities had nothing to do with
benefiting the consumer and everything to do with minimizing
competition and maximizing profits. The Cartel fixed global light
bulb prices and placed strict production quotas on its members,
imposing steep fines on any who exceeded their assigned cap. Even
as improving technology lowered manufacturing costs, prices
remained steady, netting the Cartel ever-increasing profit margins.
Even more insidiously, Phoebus artificially limited the quality of
its lightbulbs, standardizing their longevity at only 1000 hours.
Though sold to customers as a trade-off of generating more light
per watt, the true purpose of regulation was to increase the number
of bulbs customers had to purchase per year. All member companies
had to submit their lightbulbs for rigorous testing at a central
Swiss laboratory, with any who exceeded the 1000 hour standard
being fined. Between 1926 and 1933, average bulb lifespan dropped
from 1,800 to 1,200 hours, and by 1934 almost no commercially
available lightbulb lasted more than 1,500 hours. Meanwhile,
Phoebus’ members enjoyed sales increases of up to fivefold. It was
among the first large-scale applications of the strategy of Planned
Obsolescence- the practice of deliberately engineering a product to
fail or be replaced after a certain period.

Yet despite its near-stranglehold on the global lightbulb
market, by the 1930s the Phoebus Cartel was beginning to unravel.
As often happens with Cartels, several members began to vie for
greater market share, lowering prices and increasing bulb lifespans
in defiance of Phoebus’ strict standards. The expiration of General
Electric’s basic light bulb patents in 1930 also opened up the
Cartel to competition from non-member companies, and GE itself
found itself subject to several US antitrust lawsuit, further
weakening the Cartel’s profits. But the final nail in the coffin
was the start of the Second World War, which made further
cooperation between the Cartel’s members impossible. In 1940, the
organization was officially dissolved.

Though it lasted barely 15 years, the Phoebus Cartel cast a long
shadow over the 20th Century. The lightbulb designs it had
standardized with their carefully-engineered 1000-hour lifespans
continued to be manufactured long after the war, with few models
approaching pre-1924 longevity until the advent of compact
fluorescent and LED bulbs. 2019 even saw a re-emergence of the
Phoebus model in the form of the National Electrical Manufacturers
Association, an organization representing major lightbulb
manufacturers GE, Signify, and Sylvania, which successfully lobbied
the US Department of Energy to overturn a 2007 law that called for
conventional incandescent bulbs to be phased out by 2020. But
perhaps the greatest legacy of the Phoebus Cartel is the principle
of Planned Obsolescence it helped to perfect, which is baked into
nearly every consumer product on the market today, from cars to
clothes to smartphones and, seemingly given most LED and CFL bulbs
don’t last anywhere even close to their stated potential for
various reasons, lightbulbs.