The Light Bulb Conspiracy

We all happened to read some conspiracy stories in the past. Some conspiracy stories accompany the human beings during the daily life, some of them continue to appear centuries later, however, it always attracts our mind. It is well known that most conspiracies might have a solid link to the reality and if we may search deep enough it may leads us to a true story.?

Our story begins in Livermore, California, home of the world's longest-burning lightbulb. The filament-style bulb, which hangs in the Livermore fire station, has been glowing continuously since 1901 and with all respect deserving Philips on released a LED light bulb with a life span of 20 years, it is not the tour de force in indoor illumination. The real marvel is the Centennial Light in Livermore, California – an incandescent light bulb manufactured back in the 19th century. The secret to its longevity apparently died with its inventor, a French immigrant professor named Adolf Chaillet.?This lightbulb has earned a web site (Livermore's Centennial Light Bulb Cam) that video streams the lightbulb continuance shining light (https://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm).

The Phoebus cartel was established in the 1920s. This cartel collude all lightbulb manufacturers like Philips, General Electric, Osram and others across the globe. The cartel sets regulations/standards may be acceptable by all lightbulb manufacturers. During the 20' century, lightbulb manufacturers were holding the edge of the technology and were famous in their large factories - everybody wanted to have a lightbulb in their rooms and streets. This was the era of exteriorizing the good life, saloons and bars were opened until the late hours.?As the technology of the incandescent bulbs improved, the life span of lightbulbs was extremely extended. Infrequently burnt out bulbs meant less need for replacements – less demand for their products. The Phoebus cartel aimed to do more than hike prices and went beyond limiting product innovation. Over gradual course of a few years, manufacturers actively lowered the life span of light bulbs. The industry standard of 2,500 hours in 1924 would eventually reduce to 1,000 hours by 1940. Light bulbs were deliberately made more fragile, and competitors would be closely monitored (and if necessary, fined) to ensure strict adherence to product degradation.

The Phoebus cartel successfully collided with the Great Depression through much of the 1930s. During the 30' many economists from the academy offered different approaches to deal with the depression. One of the famous articles was the article of Bernard London that was an American real estate broker known for his 1932 paper "Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence".?

Bernard London proposed that to solve the Great Depression, all goods were to be produced with planned obsolescence – that everything would only be useable for a finite time before rendered obsolete. Obsolete goods would be forfeited to the government, and consumers would have no choice but to go and buy new goods, as a means of creating demand and stimulating the depressed economy. This farfetched proposal understandably failed to gain traction, due to its unpopular and rigid nature, but his musings did not fall on deaf ears.

The Phoebus cartel was vanished through the years and most of its members become bitter competitors however it might be transformed in another shape.?That said, the story of the sabotaged light bulb from the early 20th century is not rendered irrelevant. Although obsolescence may now seem to be a simple matter of design and tastes, beneath the surface people still might believe that manufactures produces intentionally dysfunctional products.

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