The Phoebus Cartel

The lightbulb makers who met in Geneva and agreed bulbs should die young. Planned obsolescence has a signed birth certificate.

The Phoebus cartel, 1925-1939: Osram, Philips, GE and others formalized an agreement capping light-bulb life at 1,000 hours (down from 2,500), with documented fines for members whose bulbs lasted too long — the founding case of planned obsolescence, preserved in cartel records and analyzed in an IEEE Spectrum history. The Livermore firehouse bulb, burning since 1901, serves as the folk counter-exhibit. This node is lore's favorite because it requires no inference: the memos of the conspiracy against durability survive.