Many thanks! What a bunch of hypocrites. In 2000, I became the co-chair of the light-bulb committee and the official caretaker of the bulb as we prepared to celebrate its 100th birthday. Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. This feeling can only bring you to self-destruction & you are entirely guilty of taking part in the Chaos. This 60W hand-made carbon filament light bulb was manufactured by Shelby Electric Company in Ohio. Ghost Town near Chernobyl, Video Survey of Pripyat (6:00) The Story of Stuff (21:00) Then, in t In carefully crafting a lightbulb with a relatively short life span, the cartel thus hatched the industrial strategy now known as planned obsolescence. People were no longer controlled by the natural alternation of light and darkness with the rising and setting of the sun. Conspiracy theorists think that this way they managed to increase the demand for light bulbs and raise their profit at the same time. They can hardly believe it.. Its not planned obsolescence, really, its just straight up advancement. If im not allowed to post this link please remove it. Powerful and influential though it was, the Phoebus cartel was short-lived. This documentary examines the crimes of David Parker Ray (November 6, 1939 May 28, 2002), who was charged with kidnapping, raping and torturing women in a small New Mexico town. The Light Bulb Conspiracy investigates the history of Planned Obsolescencethe deliberate shortening of product life span to guarantee consumer demandby charting its beginnings in the 1920s with a cartel set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, right up to present-day products involving cutting edge electronics such as the iPod. Apparently an extremely durable design, the Centennial Light isnt the only surviving bulb of this construction, simply the oldest, though many others of the same design are close. Very interesting doc. Sometimes a competitor would sell a better light bulb for less. Wellvery nice doc unfortunately with parts in Germany with subtitles in Norwegian (or Danish cant say) which limits the number of people who can understand it . Sending it all to Africa is pretty shameful. The lightbulb conspiracy, despite efforts to enlist government laws (violence), failed. Then perhaps realize that this phenomenon of planned obsolescence cost billions, not a small amount. As humans are just things for all governments as well, just a cattle that produces but shouldnt cost, we could expand this topic to the planned obsolescence of workers who shouldnt reach the age of retirement. Full version also available online here. A GE engineer named Prideaux wrote in a memo, We would suggest increasing Mazda lamp No. 3 months ago We learn about a 1920s global conspiracy to break the lightbulbto get the average bulb to burn for about 1,000 . Such incidents may well have resulted from nothing more sinister than careless manufacturing. What even is horsepower? Cin-ONU screened "The Lightbulb Conspiracy" to highlight the Year of Sustainable Energy for All. 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. And use 3 times as much electricity over its first 1500 hours over what bulb? But more often than not, no provision is given for doing so or for resetting the cleaning cycle, conveniently creating a situation where it is less expensive to buy a new printer than to fix the old one. We wondered whether that was accurate. I dont want to step on anyones toes for posting this great documentary, but I found a site that translates the subtitles and comments into english. The film travels to France, Germany, Spain . Weaving together a narrative of historical cartel machinations, shifts in engineering ethics, and a surge of criticisms of consumption . It looks strikingly ordinary, but its on an uninterruptible power supply, and a webcam streams live video of the bulb to thousands of viewers every day (you can view the webcam here, if youre interested in unchanging videos of light bulbs). Mr. Stinkypants worked harder and came up with an even better light bulb The cartel took its business of shortening the lifetime of bulbs every bit as seriously as earlier researchers had approached their job of lengthening it. The fire departments business lines and the light bulbs website were lit up with callers around the world declaring the lightbulb dead., I received a callthis was 10 years after my retirementto come down to the station. I am a little bit audiophile and trust me, I tried many headphones, but these Mantas are the best I ever tried and they are 40 years old! Nobody, even in this golden age of technology, knows why. The light bulb conspiracy is a theory that the leading manufacturers of incandescent light bulbs have conspired to keep the lifetime of their bulbs . 24/04/2012. 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 Lightbulb Conspiracy. These developments proved disastrous for manufacturers like German firm Osram, which saw its sales plummet by more than 55% between 1922 and 1923. And the Phoebus cartel shows how it could succeed. To many, the light bulb has become a symbol for planned obsolescencea tactic that some manufacturers use to ensure profits. An international co-production of France and Spain, the documentary thematizes the planned obsolescence of industrial products for commercial reasons. The U.S. company GE, one of the prime movers behind the groups formation, was itself not a member. Solid-state drives dont fail for the same reason that hard disk drives fail, but they still fail eventually, says Ben Carmitchel, president of Datarecovery.com, a company that recovers files from damaged storage media. This is about $200 per year Uh? Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a191c81ceccbca5 This is sadly true regarding the food & pharmaceutical industries Take care everybody! For more on the cartel and planned obsolescence, see the authors Fehler-Planungen. I retired in 2003 but remain the caretaker of the Centennial Bulb.. Could light bulb companies really make more bulbs that last for more than a century without burning out? In the 1920s, major light bulb manufacturers including Osram, General Electric (which had by that time absorbed Shelby Electrical), and Philips formed the Phoebus Cartel. Some facts came to light in the 1940s, when the U.S. government investigated GE and a number of its business partners for anticompetitive practices. 2 views. The latter was commonly known as the half-watt bulb, and it contained argon or other noble gas that helped to preserve the tungsten in a better way compared to a pure . CoolGuy54 7 yr. ago. Could you please correct this and take off his name? We would love to hear from you! The action you just performed triggered the security solution. Apparently, they did this by using low-quality materials and methods of production. 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. Essentially, companies build products that are designed to eventually fail so that consumers have to buy those products a second time (and third time, and fourth time, and so on). This documentary does a very good job at explaining what we have all been thinking. Among the most vocal advocates of this new school of planned obsolescence was American industrial stylist Brooks Stevens, designer of, among other things, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. But while planned obsolescence might be acceptable in certain industries, consumers and government agencies sometimes fight back. higher quality, more efficient, and brighter burning, legal attacks, particularly in the United States, LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes, Get unlimited access to IEEE Spectrum content, Follow your favorite topics to create a personalized feed of IEEE Spectrum content, Network with other technology professionals, Create a group to share and collaborate on projects. The Light Bulb Conspiracy uncovers how planned obsolescence has shaped our lives and economy since the 1920's, when manufacturers deliberately started shortening the life of consumer products to increase demand. And yes, the lightbulb has an official caretaker. Do you honestly feel capable to live like they do? The Light Bulb Conspiracy. After all, few people will complain, or even notice, if a bulb burns out 9 years after it is installed rather than 14. For the rest of us, well theres always that scene from Office Space. The film screened internationally at numerous film festivals as well as on television and was broadcast on German television several times on Arte[3][4] and Phoenix[5] starting in 2011. And thats a concept that has infuriated consumers over the past few decades. He earned $50,000 per year. At one time in history, it was possible to buy a light bulb that would last more than 100 years. Of course, given the collective ingenuity of the cartels engineers and scientists, it should have been possible to design a lightbulb that was both bright and long-lived. Thus was born the infamous "Phoebus cartel" in the 1920s, wherein representatives from top light bulb manufacturers worldwide, such as Germany's Osram, the United Kingdom's Associated . This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. The Centennial Bulband other bulbs developed at the timeuses a carbon filament, which has a lower electrical resistance as it gets hotter. Incandescent? San Francisco, CA: Video Project. Itwasthe first cartel in history to enjoy a truly global reach. my humble Acer laptop 2007 has about 6 times the power and capacity of my first computer running w98 in 98 through 2005. it runs about 5 times slower. according to the 2010 European documentary "The Light Bulb Conspiracy." Livermore's bulb considered the world's . LED? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The cartels 1924 agreement, which was supposed to last until 1955, was nullified in 1940. The details of this effort have been very slow to emerge. George W. Stocking and Myron W. Watkinss classic 1946 text Cartels in Action: Case Studies in International Business Diplomacy (Twentieth Century Fund, 1946) has an excellent account of the cartels organization and activities, with particular emphasis on the role of General Electric. Gifting Man From Gifting Land: The ghost. Dannoritzer, Cosima 2010 The Lightbulb Conspiracy. This incandescent light bulb has seen both the World Wars and is operational for 120 years now for more than 1 million hours. This page was last edited on 29 September 2022, at 22:47. In late 2017, consumer electronics giant Apple came under fire for intentionally slowing down older iPhone models in an apparent attempt to make consumers upgrade to newer phones (Apple contends that the slowdowns were necessary to keep the iPhones batteries operating as expected). The Light Bulb Conspiracy uncovers how planned obsolescence has shaped our lives and economy since the 1920's, when manufacturers deliberately started shortening the life of consumer products to increase demand. How To Spot Multi-Level Marketing Scams, And How To Avoid Them, Why Americans Refrigerate Eggs And Other Countries Dont, Reckless Drivers On The Rise Since The Pandemic Started, Caring For Houseplants: Tips, Tricks And Products You Need, Salvation Mountain And The Last Free City. Though long gone, the Phoebus cartel still casts a shadow today. Festivals fr Natur- und Umweltfilme kofilmtour 2013, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Light_Bulb_Conspiracy&oldid=1113131410, Documentary films about environmental issues, Documentary films about conspiracy theories, Articles needing additional references from August 2021, All articles needing additional references, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Best Documentary in Science, Technology and Education Award of the, Best Documentary, Spanish Television Academy Awards, 2011, Best Feature Documentary, Filmambiente 2011, Brazil, Maeda Special Prize, NHK Japan Prize 2011, Ondas Internacional 2011, Spanien (Mitgewinner: Joan beda, Executive Producer), Special Jury Mention, FICMA 2011, Spanien, Best Popular-Science Film - People and Environment 2012 (Russia), Best International Film - Kuala Lumpur Eco Film Festival (KLEFF) 2012 Malaysia, Prix Tournesol for Best Environmental Documentary Film - Festival du Film Vert Suisse (Lausanne). Particularly threatening was the flood of inexpensive bulbs from Japan. . There was a black market where you could buy, burned-out, dead light bulbs. Computers are another story all together. Your email address will not be published. A GE flashlight bulb in the precartel days was designed to last longer than three changes of batteries. I mean even Somer can hardly believe it! The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy 602. How would you survive without your modern world??? The Light Bulb Conspiracy involves investigative research and rare archive footage to trace the untold story of Planned . Indeed, all evidence points to the cartels being motivated by profits and increased sales, not by what was best for the consumer. As this episode reveals, tweaking a lightbulbs rated voltage was one way to modify the products life. Any company seeking to license GEs intellectual property had to abide by a strict production quota. The rapid spread of electrification and the introduction of new forms of lighting like bicycle lamps, car headlights, and streetlights did offer nearly limitless opportunities for inventors and entrepreneurs. Open your eyes & see how you live! Madness vs . really? This way, they ensure the continuous demand for more bulbs and hence, long-term profit . Out, Out, Brief Bulb:Prior to the Phoebus cartels formation in 1924, household bulbs typically burned for a total of 1,500 to 2,500 hours; cartel members agreed to shorten that life span to a standard 1,000 hours. Whether or not these pricier bulbs will actually last that long is still an open question, and not one that the average consumer is likely to investigate. Its part of the industry.. Dubbed the half-watt bulb, the latter was infused with argon or some other noble gas, which preserved the tungsten better than a simple vacuum; it produced five times as much light per watt as its carbon-filament predecessor. The cartels other main activities were to facilitate the exchange of patents and technical know-how and to impose far-reaching and long-lived standards. Also unscientific anecdote, and only slightly related, East Germany still uses a different lightbulb type, and the difference in light color is visible from space. In addition to the companies mentioned earlier, its members included Hungarys Tungsram, the United Kingdoms Associated Electrical Industries, and Japans Tokyo Electric. Darren Solman. After more than a century of dominance, these bulbs are now being phased out in favor of compact fluorescent and especially LED bulbs. 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. Otherwise you will go on wasting your life & adding one more waste to this wasted world Honestly, do you think that you deserve to survive the extermination you are wishing? ALL JUNK!!! Jointly founded in 1920 by three German companies, Osram remains one of the worlds leading makers of all kinds of lighting, including state-of-the-art LEDs. The cartels justification for these changes was that at the higher current levels, the bulbs produced more lumens per watt. Not all of the worlds growth has ridden on planned obsolescence much of it has been advancement as well. 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. He says thats why people come from around the country to see the light. As the members host countries went to war, close coordination became impossible. Great watch! However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence, Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, Prt jeter - Die Wegwerfer. Wal-Mart often will refuse the price of. Dead Little Buddy: The outline. But if the increase in our business resulting from such endeavors directly mean[s] a heavy penalty, it must be a thing out of reason and shall quite discourage us, the memo stated. Heres hoping that it keeps shining for another century (however dimly). It is very simple to make a bulb last forever: use a longer and thinner filament, which does not get as hot, and glows more red than white. LIGHT BULBS!!! By the early 1920s when the Phoebus Cartel was formed, light bulbs produced nearly five times as much light as Edisons first bulbs and lasted more than twice as long. A hotter filament is more efficient but burns up more quickly. This documentary originally aired on Norwegian channel NRK2, and is titled "The Pyramid of Waste - The lightbulb conspiracy". Were you Hitler in another life? Meanwhile, Phoebus members enjoyed sales increases of up to fivefold. A 1910 Osram bulb. Phoebus cartel. GE is also the focus of Leonard S. Reichs General Electric and the World Cartelization of Electric Lamps, in International Cartels in Business History: The International Conference on Business History 18 (University of Tokyo Press, 1992), edited by Akira Kud and Terushi Hara. The continuous demand for more than 100 years than a century of dominance, these bulbs now. Rated voltage was one way to modify the products life bulbs and the lightbulb conspiracy, long-term.! To modify the products life bulbs developed at the higher current levels, the light bulb has become a for... Of light and darkness with the rising and setting of the prime movers behind the groups formation, was not. Obsolescence, see the light bulb for less the untold story of planned of consumption website you will to... Name, email, and website in this browser for the rest of,... Was designed to last until 1955, was itself not a member good job at explaining what we have been! 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