- This is a video about things like cars, phones, and light bulbs
and an actual conspiracy that made them worse. This video was sponsored by NordVPN, more about them at the end of the video I am outside Livermore
Fire Station, number six. And in here, they have the longest, continuously on light bulb in the world. It has been on for 120 years since 1901. There it is. - [Host] Yeah, that's it. - It's not even connected
to a light switch but it does have a backup
battery and generator. So the big question is, how has this light bulb lasted so long? It was manufactured by hand not long after commercial light
bulbs were first invented, And yet, it has been running
for over a million hours, way longer than any light
bulb today is meant to last. Awhile back, a friend of
mine told me this story, that someone had invented a light bulb that would last forever years ago, but they never sold it because an everlasting light bulb makes for a terrible business model. I mean, you would never
have any repeat customers and eventually you would run out of people to sell light bulbs to, I thought this story sounded ridiculous. If you could make an
everlasting light bulb, then everyone would buy your light bulb over the competitors. And so you could charge
really high prices, make a lot of money, even if
demand would eventually dry up. I just couldn't imagine that
we had better light bulbs in the past and then
intentionally made them worse, but it turns out I was wrong. At least sort of. Inventing a viable
electric light was hard, I mean, this is the typical
incandescent design, which just involves
passing electric current through a material making
it so hot that it glows, less than 5% of the electrical
energy comes out as light. The other 95% is released as heat. So these are really heat bulbs, which give off a little bit
of light as a by-product. The temperature of the filament
can get up to 2,800 Kelvin. That is half as hot as
the surface of the sun. At temperatures like
those, most materials melt. - That's so cool.
- And if they don't melt, they burn, which is why in the 1840s,
Warren De la Rue came up with the idea of putting
the filament in a vacuum bulb, so there's no oxygen to react with. By 1879, Thomas Edison had made a bulb with a cotton thread filament
that lasted 14 hours. Other inventors created
bulbs with platinum filaments or other carbonized materials. And gradually, the lifespan
of bulbs increased. The filaments changed
from carbon to tungsten, which has a very high melting point. And by the early 1920s,
average bulb lifetimes were approaching 2,000 hours
with some lasting 2,500 hours. But this is when lifetimes
stopped getting longer and started getting shorter. In Geneva, Switzerland just
before Christmas, 1924, there was a secret
meeting of top executives from the world's leading
light bulb companies, Phillips, International General Electric, Tokyo Electric, OSRAM from Germany, and the UK's Associated
Electric among others. They formed what became known as the Phoebus Cartel named after Phoebus, the Greek God of light. There, all these companies agreed to work together to help each other by controlling the world
supply of light bulbs. In the early days of
the electrical industry, there had been lots of different small light bulb manufacturers, but by now they had
largely been consolidated into these big corporations, each dominant in a
particular part of the world. The biggest threat they all faced was from longer lasting light bulbs. For example, in 1923, OSRAM
sold 63 million light bulbs, but the following year
they sold only 28 million. Light bulbs were lasting
too long, eating into sales. So all the companies in the cartel agreed to reduce the lifespan of their bulbs to 1,000 hours cutting the
existing average almost in half. But how could each company ensure that the other companies would
actually follow the rules and make shorter lasting light bulb. After all, it would be in each
of their individual interests to make a better product
to outsell the others? Well, to enforce the 1,000 hour limit, each of the manufacturers
have to send in sample bulbs from their factories and they
were tested on big test stands like this one. If a bulb lasted significantly longer than
1,000 thousand hours, then the company was fined. If a bulb lasted longer than 3000 hours, well the fine was 200 Swiss Francs for every 1,000 bulbs sold. And there are records of these fines being issued to companies. But how do you make a worst
light bulb in the first place? Well, the same engineers who
had previously been tasked with extending the lifespan
now had to find ways to decrease it. So they tried different materials, different shaped filaments,
and thinner connections. And if you look at the
data, they were successful. Ever since the formation of the cartel. the lifespan of light
bulbs steadily decreased. So that by 1934, the average
lifespan was just 1,205 hours. And just as they had
planned, sales increased for cartel members by 25% in
the four years after 1926. And even though the cost
of components came down, the cartel kept prices
virtually unchanged, so they increased their profit margins. So did people know that
the light bulb companies were conspiring together to
make their products worse? No, the Phoebus Cartel
claimed that its purpose was to increase standardization
and efficiency of light bulbs. I mean, they did establish
this screw thread is standard. You can find it on
virtually all light bulbs around the world now. But all evidence points to
the cartels being motivated by profits and increased sales, not by what was best for consumers. So one of the reasons this
light bulb has lasted so long is because it was made before the cartel era. Another reason is because the
filament has always been run at low power, just four or five watts. It was meant to be a nightlight for the fire station to
provide just enough light so that firemen wouldn't
run into things at night. And the fact that it was always on reduced the thermal cycling of the filament and components
limiting the stress caused by thermal expansion and contraction. The Phoebus Cartel was
initially planned to last at least until 1955, but
it fell apart in the 1930s. It was already struggling
due to outside competition. And non-compliance amongst
some of its members, but the outbreak of World War II is really what finished it off. So this cartel was dead, but its methods survived to this day. There are lots of companies out there that intentionally shortened
the lifespan of their products it's a tactic known now
as planned obsolescence. This was actually the
subject of Casey Neistat's first viral video all
the way back in 2003. - [Support] Thank you for
calling Apple, my name is Ryan. May I have your first name please? - [Casey] Casey. - [Support] ] All right, and what seems to be the issue today? - [Casey] I have an iPod that
I bought about 18 months ago and the battery is dead on it. - [Support] 18 months,
okay, it's past it year, which basically means there'll be a charge of $255 plus a mailing
fee to send it to us to refurbish, to correct it. But at that price, you might
as well go get a new one. - [Narrator] This video
got millions of views in a time before YouTube or social media. And it spawned a class action lawsuit, which Apple settled out of court, but it didn't stop the company from practicing planned obsolescence. After an iOS update in 2017, users of older iPhones found apps loading significantly slower or the
device shutting down altogether. Apple said they throttled
performance to protect the battery of older devices and
increase their longevity. Of course, that wouldn't be an issue if the battery were replaceable. In a series of lawsuits
that concluded in 2020, Apple was fined or reached settlements to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, undoubtedly, this amount
pales in comparison to the extra revenue they generate by limiting the lifespan
of their products. But some would argue that
planned obsolescence isn't just about greed, but that
it's also good for everyone. During the great depression in the 1930s when as much as 1/4 of
Americans were out of work and real estate broker Bernard London proposed mandatory planned obsolescence as a way to get people back to work and lift America out of the depression. He wrote, "I would have the
government assign a lease of life to shoes, and homes, and machines when they are first created and they would be sold
and used within the term of their existence, definitely
known by the consumer. After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally dead and would be controlled by the duly appointed governmental
agency and destroyed if there is widespread unemployment." Now, this might sound
like a wild fringe idea, but people were clearly afraid
of being put out of work by technological progress and
products that were too good. There was even a popular
Oscar nominated film about it. "This is the man in the
white suit from 1951." It's about a scientist who
invents the perfect fiber. It won't stain or break, or fray. - I think I've succeeded in the copolymerization
of amino acid residues and carbohydrate molecules,
both containing ionic groups. It's really perfectly simple. - [Narrator] The Academy
award nomination was for best screenplay, I kid you not. Anyway, everyone is initially excited about our heroes scientific discovery. He makes a suit out of the
thread and it has to be white because the fiber is so stain resistant, it can't even be dyed, but this is when trouble strikes, the factory owners realize
they won't be able to sell as much of this thread
because it's so durable. And the workers worry it'll
put them out of a job. - Why can't you scientists
leave things alone? What about my better washing
when there's no washing to do? - This is when you get the climactic scene where factory workers and
factory owners team up to chase down the scientist to destroy him and his invention. And believe it or not, this
movie may have been inspired by real events. In the 1940s, the synthetic
fiber nylon replaced silk in stockings, and it was so durable that the products became
an overnight sensation. There were literal riots when women tried to get their hands on them. When the manufacturers realized they had made the product too good, they didn't destroy the fiber, but they did follow the
example of the Phoebus Cartel. They instructed their
engineers and scientists to find ways to weaken the
product to shorten its lifespan, so people would have to buy more. Now, it seems like consumers
are finally fighting back against planned obsolescence. In the European union and
in over 25 states in the US, there's proposed legislation to enshrine the right to repair. And these laws would force manufacturers to make it easier to
repair their products. They would have to provide
information and access to parts. So you could replace a battery
or fix a cracked screen at a third-party repair shop
without voiding your warranty. So if right to repair does become law, does that mean artificial obsolescence will be gone for good? Sadly, no, because there is one last thing manufacturers can use to make their products
obsolete, which is you. (instrumental music) Henry Ford released the
first mass market car, the model T in 1908. And he envisioned it like a workhorse, an affordable tool that wouldn't wear out, a bit like the everlasting light bulb. In 1922 Ford said, "We want the
man who buys one of our cars never to have to buy another,
we never make an improvement that renders any previous model obsolete." But by 1920, 55% of American
families already owned a car. Nearly everyone that
could afford one had one. And that same year, there was a small economic
downturn driving down sales for both Ford and General Motors. In 1921, DuPont, the chemical
and paint company took over the controlling
share in General Motors. And they started experimenting with painting cars different colors, up until then, Henry Ford had said, you could have whatever color you like so long as it's black. It took a couple of years
of testing, but in 1924, GM released their first
cars in different colors. And soon after, they introduced a trick that feels very familiar now. Each new year, they would introduce
cars in different colors. The goal wasn't just to make
Ford's model T lookout dated, but to make their own cars
feel outdated every year encouraging customers to
trade in their old cars for shiny new ones. Years later, GM's head
of design, Harley Earl, candidly discussed his role in creating what he called dynamic obsolescence. "Our big job is to hasten obsolescence. In 1934, the average car
ownership span was five years. Now, which was 1955, it is two years. When it is one year, we
will have a perfect score. By the time he said this,
General Motors was the most valuable company in
the world and it's sold half of all vehicles purchased
in the US every year. These days, the world's
most valuable company, Apple, seems to have copied
directly out of this playbook. I mean, new styles every year, check, new special colors every year, check, marginal technological improvement, check. I mean, is this useful
innovation or just a gimmick? The inspiration for General
Motors and hence for Apple comes from fashion where real
innovation is all but impossible. So the only way to make
people feel the urgency to get out there and
buy is to create styles that last but one season. The trouble then is you run through these styles too quickly. And then what are you supposed to do? Well, just recycle the styles
from a few decades ago. The iPhone also shows
this recycling trend. I mean, just look at
the way the edges were initially rounded and
then they were squared off and then they were rounded again and now, they're squared off. And how much do you want to bet that the iPhone 14 has rounded edges? I think the point is that
with design and styling, there is no best, there's only different, which is apparently enough to remind us that we don't have the
latest and greatest, and so we have to rush
out and keep buying. The only type of obsolescence we should support is technological, which brings us back to the light bulb. In the last 20 years,
light bulbs have gone from incandescent, which
was basically unchanged for 100 years to compact fluorescent. And now, to LED, these use
just a 10th of the energy and can last anywhere from
10 to 50 times longer. Yeah, that's pretty bright. So you're more likely to sell your house than to have to replace an LED bulb that you've installed inside it. So we finally reached the point of what is essentially an
everlasting light bulb? (upbeat music) Hey, this video was sponsored by NordVPN. I am featured in an episode
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Veritasium: woo everlasting light bulbs
Big Clive: LEDs have planned obsolescence (Dubai lamps)
I learned nothing I didn’t already know
Watched to learn about everlasting bulb - instead got a rudimentary explanations capitalism
How Capitalism Directly impedes progress.