Why Do Light Bulbs Die? The Phoebus Cartel and Planned Obsolescence

October 29, 20266 min read
Why Do Light Bulbs Die? The Phoebus Cartel and Planned Obsolescence

This weekend started with a question I'd never bothered to ask: why do light bulbs die so fast? My hallway bulb had gone for the third time this year, and the box said "long life". It turns out someone once wrote down exactly how long a bulb should live, and then fined anyone who beat it.

▶ Watch the full investigation on YouTube: The Secret Conspiracy That Designed Your Life to Fail. It's a 6-minute story from The Invisible Economist, and this article is its written companion with sources.

Geneva, Christmas week, 1924

In December 1924, the world's biggest lighting makers met in Geneva. Osram, Philips, companies tied to General Electric, and others from Britain to Japan. In every shop window they were rivals. At that table they divided the world into territories and agreed not to compete. They named themselves after the Greek god of light: the Phoebus cartel.

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Then someone said the quiet part out loud. Bulbs were lasting too long, 1,500 or 2,000 hours. Every bulb still burning was a sale that never came.

What was the Phoebus cartel's 1,000-hour rule?

The cartel set a standard life of 1,000 hours for ordinary incandescent bulbs. Factories sent sample bulbs to a testing lab in Switzerland, where they burned day and night while technicians logged every hour. If a factory's bulbs lasted too long, it paid a fine.

Engineers who had spent careers keeping filaments alive were now paid to make them die on schedule. It worked, though not overnight. Average tested life did not drop straight to 1,000 hours: according to IEEE Spectrum, it fell from about 1,800 hours in 1926 to roughly 1,200 hours by the early 1930s. Production got cheaper; shop prices did not. The cartel argued shorter-lived bulbs gave brighter, more efficient light, and there is a real trade-off between brightness, efficiency and lifespan in an incandescent filament. Still, it was convenient how the physics always agreed with the profits.

You were no longer buying light. You were renting it, one dead bulb at a time.

The cartel died. The idea didn't.

The Second World War broke the cartel up by 1939, but the idea survived in new clothes. In 1932, a New York property broker named Bernard London published a pamphlet called Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence, proposing that products be given a legal expiry date. That law never passed. It didn't need to.

In 1954, industrial designer Brooks Stevens helped popularise the phrase, describing it as giving buyers the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than necessary. Car makers rolled out a new model every year while the old one still worked. Then came printer ink priced like perfume and cartridges with chips that reject other brands. In 2017, a phone maker admitted software updates had slowed older phones and later paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements. Glued-in batteries, special screws, repairs that cost more than replacing the device.

It isn't always a conspiracy. Often it's just an incentive quietly pointing away from the buyer.

Is planned obsolescence illegal?

In some places, yes. France made deliberately shortening a product's life an offence in 2015, and it now publishes repairability and durability scores for designated product categories such as phones, laptops and washing machines (not every product). In 2024 the European Union adopted a right-to-repair directive that pushes makers to offer repairs and spare parts. Canada and the US have patchier rules, mostly at the province and state level.

The bulb that never got the memo

In a fire station in Livermore, California, a hand-blown bulb known as the Centennial Light has burned almost continuously since 1901, with a few short interruptions. It has passed a million hours, outlived the firefighters who hung it, and outlasted several of the webcams pointed at it. It was made before anyone agreed it shouldn't last.

What I'm doing differently

  • Asking what the replacement cycle is before I buy: ink, filters, batteries, subscriptions.
  • Looking for repairability or durability scores where they exist, and spare-part availability.
  • Treating "long life" on a box as a marketing claim, not a promise.

Our grandparents bought things once. We were taught to buy them forever. Once you see the hidden hand on the price, it's hard to unsee.

Questions this video answers

Did companies really agree to make light bulbs fail sooner?
Yes. The Phoebus cartel, established in 1924, adopted a 1,000-hour lifespan standard for ordinary incandescent bulbs. Members faced financial penalties when tested bulbs exceeded the limit. The standard also involved real trade-offs between brightness, efficiency and lifespan.

Who invented planned obsolescence?
Bernard London used the term in his 1932 pamphlet, Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence. Industrial designer Brooks Stevens later helped popularise the idea in the 1950s.

Is there a light bulb that has lasted over 100 years?
Yes. The Centennial Light in Livermore, California, has operated almost continuously since 1901, with occasional interruptions. Its longevity does not mean modern bulbs can necessarily match it: it is a dim, low-power carbon-filament bulb.

How can consumers avoid unnecessary replacement costs?
Before buying, look at replacement consumables, expected lifespan, repairability, spare-part availability and total cost of ownership. Where available, check official repairability or durability ratings.

Watch the full investigation

See how planned obsolescence shapes the products we buy, the businesses that sell them, and the hidden economics of replacement cycles.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The Secret Conspiracy That Designed Your Life to Fail

More economic history and hidden incentives: The Invisible Economist on YouTube · all videos and companion articles on KrypTunes.

Sources

Also on Medium: Why Do Light Bulbs Die?. For information only.

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