The Great (Incandescent) Lighbulb Conspiracy

This article from IEEE is an interesting read about the early formation of a lighting cartel, and possibly the first instance of planned obsolescence. This cartel of worldwide lightbulb manufacturers actually worked to shorten the household bulb's lifespan from ~2500 hours to 1000 hours in order to sell more bulbs.

Thanks! Lots more interesting stuff on that IEEE Geek site. Who knew the blue LED was invented in the 70's at RCA?

Hmmmm.... Food for thought..

PhotonWrangler said:

This article from IEEE is an interesting read about the early formation of a lighting cartel, and possibly the first instance of planned obsolescence. This cartel of worldwide lightbulb manufacturers actually worked to shorten the household bulb's lifespan from ~2500 hours to 1000 hours in order to sell more bulbs.

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It would be good to read the comments for some knowledgable counterpoint. The article was written by a professor of media studies.

70 years after the cartel ended and bulb life was still 1,000 hours for standard (non-halogen) bulbs. 70 years of engineering, almost no improvement (as suggested the cartel could have done).

It also completely ignored that you could still buy 10k hour bulbs if you wanted.

CoveAxe said:

It also completely ignored that you could still buy 10k hour bulbs if you wanted.

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Yes, the higher-voltage and/or ruggedized filament bulbs. They do last a lot longer but they're less efficient. I equipped a studio with long-life incandescents because I got tired of replacing regular ones. They were noticeably dimmer for the same rated wattage and they were pricier, but that was the last time I had to replace them.

I think the article was focusing on the regular household bulbs, the bread & butter for the manufacturers.

They do last a lot longer but they're less efficient

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Yes, that's the point. It's impossible to make a longer lasting incandescent bulb without hurting efficiency. That's why the 1,000 hour lifetime was eventually settled upon: it's a good compromise between efficiency and bulb life.

The "Phoebus" Cartel

We all know there is no such thing as a conspiracy, 'cause Santa Clause told us so.

I thought this was going to be about how new LED and Florescent bulbs are more harmful to the environment than old incan bulbs. This instead as has already been noted was just written by someone who doesn't understand the direct comparison between efficiency and rated life of a tungsten or carbon filament. It's not a hard concept to grasp, throw just enough voltage to make a filament glow, congrats you've got a 1,000,000 hour rated bulb. Just like the old carbon filament bulb being under driven http://www.centennialbulb.org/ seriously it's all relative an incan's life is just related to how hard you drive it. I've built hotwires that last minuets not hours, those lights where pushing at 50 lumens a watt, while a standard 60 watt 120 volt bulb will be around 10. But guess what it would cost too much for that level of efficiency (in replacements) just as it would cost too much in electricity to run a 100,000 hour long life bulb at .001 watts a lumen. The only conspiracy is that instead of running nuclear energy 100% and only using super green pollution free incan lights we spend billions on toxic super expansive bulbs that don't help the planet in any way.


Also my signature is oddly appropriate for this

I get that maybe we can go nuclear if we create safe Antarctica dump sites, since the US government had no problem repeatedly nuking Pacific islands in the past, while Russia nuked their underwater oil leaks shut. I even subscribe to the Great Thorium Conspiracy by converging interests of the military and Nixon's reelection interest and interests of the greenies. I get there is a minuscule mercury content in florescent bulbs that is dwarfed by mercury released into the environment by energy production to run that inefficient incan bulb. I get that my 40 lumen per watt photographer Lowell Tota hir halogen has a short 400 hour bulb life. But, I do not get your argument that leds are harmful in any way to the environment, other than the fact that all economic activity creates pollution. Harmful to my local economy are these led creatures; yes, since there are cfl factories locally nearby me, while leds are made in China--for some reason which is baffling. -Post was created on a polluting led back lit smart phone, which lacked the benefit of the "pollution free" incan back lighting setup.

degarb said:

I get that maybe we can go nuclear if we create safe Antarctica dump sites, since the US government had no problem repeatedly nuking Pacific islands in the past, while Russia nuked their underwater oil leaks shut. I even subscribe to the Great Thorium Conspiracy by converging interests of the military and Nixon's reelection interest and interests of the greenies. I get there is a minuscule mercury content in florescent bulbs that is dwarfed by mercury released into the environment by energy production to run that inefficient incan bulb. I get that my 40 lumen per watt photographer Lowell Tota hir halogen has a short 400 hour bulb life. But, I do not get your argument that leds are harmful in any way to the environment, other than the fact that all economic activity creates pollution. Harmful to my local economy are these led creatures; yes, since there are cfl factories locally nearby me, while leds are made in China--for some reason which is baffling. -Post was created on a polluting led back lit smart phone, which lacked the benefit of the "pollution free" incan back lighting setup.

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Not just ranting for the sake of ranting, as an Industrial Designer I have a pretty good idea the complications encountered when trying to recycle anything plastic based, sure it can be "done" but the end product can't be much better than used in milk jugs etc. Worse still joint bonded synthetic plastics can be virtually impossible to separate after being molded. Think toothbrushes with their soft and hard polymer composites these cannot be melted down and recycled feasibly, it's like trying to un-bake a cake and reuse the eggs and wheat. LEDs have a lot going on in a very small space. Now let me admit that I'm not trying to paint LEDs as some sort of planet killer, I mean really they are essentially insignificant in the big picture (tooth brushes alone will do more harm to the environment than they ever will). Just stating that an incan bulb is much easier to recycle. It's base materials to not change chemically and it's total count of materials is low and easily collected. It was more an argument to be pro nuclear and not worry about lighting efficiencies in the first place. Which admitently is a bit off subject.

It was more an argument to be pro nuclear and not worry about lighting efficiencies in the first place.

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I'll have to disagree here for a couple of reasons.

Even if you have an all-nuclear grid, you are generating much more nuclear waste per year (in terms of tons) from the extra power needed for incandescent lighting than the mildly-toxic materials you would have from LED disposal, and I don't think anyone would argue that the nuclear waste is safer than the LED waste. The toxicity from the LED materials only comes about if you break open the packaging and then either ingest or inhale the crystal particle dust, which is pretty much impossible when it's in a landfill. Once it's in a landfill, it's pretty much inert environmentally speaking.

Also it's actually not difficult to recycle LEDs. The substrate materials used are easily separable from the packaging. The problem is the logistics of separating out the LEDs from the rest of the bulb, and transporting them for recycling, and the fact that there is no universal standard at the moment. It's usually just cheaper to get more gallium and arsenic since both are waste byproducts of other industrial processes. That's also another reason why I don't follow your reasoning: since the main materials used in LEDs are byproducts of other industries, they are going to be generated regardless even if you completely stopped production of LEDs. It wouldn't matter if the grid was all nuclear or not.

I won't even get into the huge impracticalities from switching to 100% nuclear, which another argument entirely.

Source: I'm an electrical engineer that has worked with a lot of semiconductor fabrication processes and materials.