WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.732 Planned obsolescence - it’s an insidious thing. 00:00:03.732 --> 00:00:07.783 A business that designs the perfect product which lasts forever 00:00:07.783 --> 00:00:10.860 will run out of customers once everybody has one. 00:00:10.860 --> 00:00:16.272 And running out of customers is a pretty bad strategy for a business which strives to be immortal. 00:00:16.272 --> 00:00:20.703 This simple reality, when viewed with a slightly twisted mindset, 00:00:20.703 --> 00:00:28.071 can be seen as a reason to never build the perfect product, and it is often argued - quite convincingly,  I should say - 00:00:28.071 --> 00:00:35.100 that companies today are actively making their products worse to guarantee you’ll have to buy another one before too long. 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:38.670 Now, I’m not here to make any accusations. 00:00:38.670 --> 00:00:43.861 Though I do certainly wish to see us endowed with a right to repair the things we own, 00:00:43.861 --> 00:00:46.062 and maybe some other things while we’re at it. 00:00:46.062 --> 00:00:50.853 Uh, anyway, though I won’t comment on what may or may not be happening today, 00:00:50.853 --> 00:00:59.935 between the first and second world wars, an actual, documented conspiracy between light bulb manufacturers across the globe existed. 00:00:59.935 --> 00:01:05.399 The Phoebus cartel, an arrangement between Osram,  Philips, General Electric, and several others, 00:01:05.399 --> 00:01:10.671 established a maximum light bulb life expectancy of 1,000 hours. 00:01:10.671 --> 00:01:20.992 The organization even conducted tests on each other’s products and issued fines to its members when their light bulbs took just a little too long to burn out. 00:01:20.992 --> 00:01:31.740 Most insidiously, they defined this 1,000 hour maximum after light bulbs with significantly longer 2,500 hour lifespans already existed. 00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:36.389 That would seem to point straight at planned obsolescence - 00:01:36.389 --> 00:01:41.880 after all, the lifespan of light bulbs had steadily  been going up before the cartel was formed,   00:01:41.880 --> 00:01:46.986 so surely we were on our way to some sort of  everlasting lightbulb stopper. 00:01:46.986 --> 00:01:53.166 The manufacturers coming together to impose an artificial limit  like they are known to have done 00:01:53.166 --> 00:01:57.827 seems on the surface at least nothing but a ploy to sell more light bulbs. 00:01:57.827 --> 00:02:03.215 And light bulbs sales just so happened to increase after the lifespan limit was enforced, 00:02:03.215 --> 00:02:04.920 which reversed a worrying trend. 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.220 Sure smells like planned obsolescence to me! 00:02:08.880 --> 00:02:13.564 Indeed, the smell is so strong that many people point to the Phoebus cartel 00:02:13.564 --> 00:02:18.900 as the genesis of planned obsolescence, or at least a very clear and undeniable example.   00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:25.975 And perhaps the most irrefutable piece of evidence  comes from, of all places, a garage in California.   00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:30.660 Hanging in the firehouse in the town  of Livermore is the Centennial Light,   00:02:30.660 --> 00:02:37.028 an incandescent light bulb that has been burning  nearly continuously since 1901. 00:02:37.028 --> 00:02:44.400 Surely that light bulb with its century-plus longevity proves that light bulbs never truly “need” to burn out.   00:02:46.860 --> 00:02:48.579 Well… ok 00:02:48.579 --> 00:02:51.720 so have you ever actually seen an image of the Centennial Light? 00:02:52.740 --> 00:02:54.638 Here it is. 00:02:54.638 --> 00:02:56.940 Yeah, it’s barely glowing, is it? 00:02:57.780 --> 00:02:58.596 See… 00:02:58.596 --> 00:02:59.795 *sigh* 00:02:59.795 --> 00:03:03.890 This topic is actually one that actually feels weird to cover. 00:03:03.890 --> 00:03:10.084 I definitely think that planned obsolescence has happened and arguably is still happening today, 00:03:10.084 --> 00:03:15.802 and I wasn’t just making wordplay back then - I am genuinely on the side of the right to repair movement, 00:03:15.802 --> 00:03:21.479 and giving something an artificial expiration date just to  ensure you can sell more is, 00:03:21.479 --> 00:03:22.620 uh, pretty gross! 00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:31.200 However… the incandescent light bulb is just  not a good example of planned obsolescence for lots of reasons, 00:03:31.200 --> 00:03:35.640 and using it as evidence of planned obsolescence genuinely bothers me. 00:03:36.540 --> 00:03:41.012 Am I about to “well, actually” the Phoebus cartel story? 00:03:41.012 --> 00:03:43.494 [through gritted teeth] Yeah... 00:03:43.494 --> 00:03:47.870 Here’s the thing - when the story of the Phoebus Cartel is told, 00:03:47.870 --> 00:03:57.097 those telling it have a bad habit of downplaying or even outright  ignoring the fact that there were real, significant, actual advantages 00:03:57.097 --> 00:04:01.500 to a light bulb that only promised 1,000 hours of operating time. 00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:06.540 Such bulbs produced a whiter-looking  light which was easier to see under,   00:04:06.540 --> 00:04:10.504 and they could produce more light with the same  amount of power - 00:04:10.504 --> 00:04:15.867 which meant they cost you, the person paying that power bill, less to operate. 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:18.780 That’s a pretty important caveat, don’tcha think? 00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:22.834 Glossing over that little bit of context is bad enough, 00:04:22.834 --> 00:04:26.668 but a second rather important fact tends to get skipped, too: 00:04:26.668 --> 00:04:33.118 that being that light bulbs were never a durable good, and once we figured out how to automate their production,   00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:35.771 they weren’t exactly expensive. 00:04:36.069 --> 00:04:39.639 I mean, it’s literally just a little bit of glass, 00:04:39.639 --> 00:04:41.047 a little bit of wire, 00:04:41.047 --> 00:04:44.550 and a little bit of metal and resin to form the screw base. 00:04:44.550 --> 00:04:52.995 There is more than 5 times as much glass in this empty jar of maple butter than there is in this 40 watt light bulb. 00:04:52.995 --> 00:04:56.913 It took us years and years to figure out how to make these things, sure, 00:04:56.913 --> 00:05:02.402 but once we were able to use machines to crank these out in big ol’ light bulb factories… 00:05:02.402 --> 00:05:05.340 well this isn’t a very complex object now, is it? 00:05:05.880 --> 00:05:10.756 No, it’s not, but before we continue we need a little bit of background: 00:05:10.756 --> 00:05:16.620 incandescent light bulbs are called that because they rely on the phenomenon of incandescence to produce light   00:05:16.620 --> 00:05:17.988 in a bulb. 00:05:17.988 --> 00:05:22.658 Incandescence is this weird thing  that happens when stuff gets really hot - 00:05:22.658 --> 00:05:31.460 all things emit electromagnetic radiation, and as they get hotter, they start to emit waves with shorter and shorter wavelengths until, eventually, 00:05:31.460 --> 00:05:35.837 those wavelengths hit the visible light spectrum that our peepers detect. 00:05:35.837 --> 00:05:43.794 That’s why the wires in your toaster glow an orangey-red - they’re just so hot that they’re emitting some visible light. 00:05:43.794 --> 00:05:45.756 But, not a lot. 00:05:45.756 --> 00:05:53.580 They’re definitely really hot, but you need to get much much hotter to shift from a dull orange glow to something more useful. 00:05:54.300 --> 00:05:56.594 And we knew how to do that just fine! 00:05:56.594 --> 00:06:05.100 We had been playing about with this electricity business for quite some time and plenty of experiments were  done showing thin wires glowing quite brightly. 00:06:06.180 --> 00:06:10.860 The trouble was that when you make things  so hot that they start emitting white light,   00:06:11.520 --> 00:06:16.500 those things tend to either melt or react with oxygen in the air and burn.   00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:20.460 And that little problem is what the light bulb sought to fix. 00:06:21.540 --> 00:06:24.190 After years and years of experimentation, 00:06:24.190 --> 00:06:31.800 various people whom I won’t name to avoid comment-section flame wars arrived upon a filament which could get extremely hot without melting.   00:06:32.400 --> 00:06:39.392 When exposed to the atmosphere with all that  oxygen floating around, it would still burn, though, and quickly go up in smoke. 00:06:39.392 --> 00:06:44.847 So, we put it in a clear, glass bulb that we sucked all the air out of with a vacuum pump. 00:06:44.847 --> 00:06:48.936 Now there was no oxygen in there for the material of the filament to react with, 00:06:48.936 --> 00:06:51.379 so it couldn’t possibly burn. 00:06:51.379 --> 00:06:52.474 And there you go. 00:06:52.474 --> 00:06:53.991 That’s what a light bulb is. 00:06:53.991 --> 00:06:59.100 An impossibly hot bit of wire protected from burning away by its own little envelope of nothing. 00:06:59.880 --> 00:07:03.240 The first functional light bulbs didn’t last long at all,   00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:06.255 but we were still learning how best to make them. 00:07:06.255 --> 00:07:11.040 We tried all sorts of things - different shapes and materials  for the filament, the bulb itself,   00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:15.660 the support structures, more-perfect vacuums, and eventually we got pretty good at it!   00:07:16.200 --> 00:07:21.000 But we still had an insurmountable barrier: the melting point of the carbon filament. 00:07:21.660 --> 00:07:26.041 There was a hard limit to how hot you could run  the filament before it broke, 00:07:26.041 --> 00:07:30.444 so early light bulbs produced a rather dull, orangey-yellow light. 00:07:30.444 --> 00:07:33.172 Still beat the pants off of gas lamps, though. 00:07:33.172 --> 00:07:37.949 But then, we figured out how to form thin wire filaments from tungsten. 00:07:37.949 --> 00:07:44.664 That alone was quite the engineering feat - tungsten’s hardness and brittleness make it very difficult to work with. 00:07:44.664 --> 00:07:51.083 But figuring it out was the holy grail of  light bulb makers because of tungsten’s extremely high melting point: 00:07:51.083 --> 00:07:55.916 the highest of any known element at 3,422 degrees Celsius, 00:07:55.916 --> 00:07:59.054 6,192 degrees Fahrenheit, 00:07:59.054 --> 00:08:02.314 or 3,695 Kelvin… 00:08:02.314 --> 00:08:03.786 degrees. [stares knowing exactly what he did] 00:08:03.786 --> 00:08:09.480 If we could just crack that code, we could make the  most brilliant light bulbs anyone had ever seen. 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:13.169 Of course, we did - and with tungsten filaments, 00:08:13.169 --> 00:08:17.929 whiter, brighter, longer-lasting light bulbs started to become the norm. 00:08:17.929 --> 00:08:20.551 A couple of other innovations were still on the way: 00:08:20.551 --> 00:08:25.243 the coiled coil structure of the filament, through its compact and dense shape, 00:08:25.243 --> 00:08:28.087 allowed it to run hotter with less input power. 00:08:28.087 --> 00:08:36.327 And we found that adding a little inert gas to the bulb like argon or krypton worked better for tungsten filament longevity than a pure vacuum. 00:08:37.666 --> 00:08:40.765 But really, aside from those two things… 00:08:40.800 --> 00:08:43.488 the light bulb wouldn’t change anymore. 00:08:43.488 --> 00:08:50.488 This appliance bulb I just bought in a store the other day is no different from the light bulbs manufactured a century ago - 00:08:50.488 --> 00:08:57.720 it’s just a piece of tungsten wire glowing because it gets literally white-hot when we run current through it,   00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:01.732 positioned inside of a thin glass bulb filled  with an inert gas at low pressure 00:09:01.732 --> 00:09:05.059 to prevent the filament from reacting with oxygen and burning away. 00:09:05.059 --> 00:09:07.080 Not exactly the pinnacle of complexity. 00:09:07.620 --> 00:09:13.177 However, the filament reacting with oxygen and burning isn’t the only issue we have. 00:09:13.177 --> 00:09:18.558 Although tungsten won’t melt until it hits 3,695 Kelvin, 00:09:18.558 --> 00:09:23.721 it does have this annoying habit of evaporating when it gets close to there. 00:09:23.721 --> 00:09:25.893 Or, I guess technically that would be sublimating. 00:09:25.893 --> 00:09:35.026 Anyway, as the lamp is operated, little bits of hot tungsten become liberated from the filament and wind up on the inside surface of the glass, 00:09:35.026 --> 00:09:39.000 which both darkens the glass bulb and weakens the filament with time. 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:44.103 Eventually, the filament becomes so weak that it breaks, 00:09:44.103 --> 00:09:46.699 and pop goes the light bulb. 00:09:46.699 --> 00:09:54.062 And here’s where the heaping spoonful of oft-omitted nuance from the Phoebus cartel story comes back into play: 00:09:54.062 --> 00:09:59.400 how quickly a light bulb burns out depends on how hot you run the filament. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.749 The closer you get to tungsten’s melting point,  the faster evaporation happens, 00:10:04.749 --> 00:10:10.500 which leads to the filament weakening more quickly and thus  results in a shorter lifespan for the light bulb. 00:10:11.400 --> 00:10:15.552 Sounds like we should just not run them too hot, then, but see… 00:10:15.552 --> 00:10:22.680 as you get closer to tungsten’s melting point, you also get a brighter,  whiter, more energy-efficient light bulb. 00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:29.665 There’s a trade-off between quality and efficiency of the light produced by an incandescent light bulb 00:10:29.665 --> 00:10:33.060 and how long that light bulb will run before it fails. 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:39.418 This is merely a physical reality of all non-halogen tungsten-filament lamps. 00:10:39.418 --> 00:10:44.018 It’s a reality we understood in 1925 when the cartel was formed, 00:10:44.018 --> 00:10:49.500 and it’s a reality that continues to be real for what few  incandescent light bulbs remain on the market. 00:10:50.160 --> 00:10:55.561 For example, these are both 40 watt incandescent light bulbs. 00:10:55.561 --> 00:11:01.229 One of them is an appliance bulb like you’d put in your oven  rated for 2,500 hours of runtime. 00:11:01.229 --> 00:11:07.680 The other is a “ceiling fan bulb” which is really just a  general-purpose bulb with a candelabra base. 00:11:08.460 --> 00:11:12.025 This bulb only promises 1,000 hours of runtime, 00:11:12.025 --> 00:11:16.067 and boy are these runtimes weirdly similar to how the cartel story started, 00:11:16.067 --> 00:11:17.372 that’s strange. 00:11:17.372 --> 00:11:20.496 Anyway, when we compare the two side-by-side, 00:11:20.496 --> 00:11:24.996 the longer-lasting appliance bulb is noticeably dimmer and yellower 00:11:24.996 --> 00:11:28.961 despite using a nearly-identical amount of power. 00:11:28.961 --> 00:11:37.800 It is a longer-lasting light bulb, but it is also objectively worse at its single  job of producing light with electrical power. 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:41.707 So which is really the better light bulb? 00:11:42.659 --> 00:11:45.180 Sorta depends on what you’re going for, doesn’t it? 00:11:45.720 --> 00:11:48.587 But these are two different light bulbs - 00:11:48.587 --> 00:11:53.849 maybe there’s some sort of manufacturing issue with the appliance bulb and it shouldn’t be that dim. 00:11:53.849 --> 00:11:57.727 Well, to demonstrate slightly more scientifically, 00:11:57.727 --> 00:12:01.950 I’ve got a big ol’ box of 555 indicator lamps. 00:12:01.950 --> 00:12:09.095 These little light bulbs are designed to run at 6.3 volts and consume about 1.5 watts of power. 00:12:09.095 --> 00:12:13.673 When run at their rated voltage, they’re definitely not the brightest things out there - 00:12:13.673 --> 00:12:17.847 they barely produce a visible glow when under this lampshade. 00:12:17.847 --> 00:12:20.750 But watch what happens when I double the voltage. 00:12:20.750 --> 00:12:24.945 The light has gotten much brighter, and whiter, too. 00:12:24.945 --> 00:12:31.841 It’s also now drawing nearly 5 watts of power - and boy is this the brightest 5 watt light bulb I’ve ever seen. 00:12:31.841 --> 00:12:35.750 Look how much brighter it is than this 4-watt night-light bulb. 00:12:35.750 --> 00:12:36.840 That’s impressive. 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:41.713 So… why don’t we run all light bulbs like this? 00:12:41.713 --> 00:12:43.795 Well, you probably already know. 00:12:43.795 --> 00:12:47.231 It’s because they don’t last long at all when you do this. 00:12:47.231 --> 00:12:50.440 While we are getting way more light out of this thing, 00:12:50.440 --> 00:12:53.376 the filament is getting weaker by the minute. 00:12:53.376 --> 00:13:01.915 This bulb was only run for 10 minutes at double its rated voltage, and already we can see significant darkening of the glass. 00:13:01.915 --> 00:13:09.154 That’s from the evaporated tungsten which has deposited on the glass and that happens in all non-halogen incandescent bulbs, 00:13:09.154 --> 00:13:13.680 but it’s particularly noticeable with these  little fellas since the bulb itself is so small. 00:13:14.520 --> 00:13:17.083 To give a true running-time at this voltage, 00:13:17.083 --> 00:13:25.265 I ran a stopwatch on a test of a fresh bulb and found it only survived for 65 minutes at 12.6 volts. 00:13:25.265 --> 00:13:27.180 And that’s what it looked like in the end. 00:13:27.720 --> 00:13:32.242 And I want to be clear here, the melting point of tungsten isn’t the issue. 00:13:32.242 --> 00:13:38.260 I’d estimate that at 12.6 volts we’re running the filament at somewhere near 3,100 Kelvin, 00:13:38.260 --> 00:13:41.880 and tungsten won’t melt until 3,695 (plus tax). 00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:46.479 The problem is the rate of evaporation of the filament. 00:13:46.479 --> 00:13:49.853 That happens faster with every increase in temperature, 00:13:49.853 --> 00:13:53.166 so the hotter you run it, the shorter the life it will live. 00:13:53.166 --> 00:13:59.762 If you just keep on cranking the voltage up, you will hit the melting point and will experience an instant burn-out, 00:13:59.762 --> 00:14:08.617 but after sacrificing several bulbs for the good of science, I found that 20 volts would keep us just below the melting point 00:14:08.617 --> 00:14:11.966 and we could see just how bright we can get one of these suckers. 00:14:11.966 --> 00:14:15.175 And boy is it astonishingly bright - 00:14:15.175 --> 00:14:19.916 here’s that table lamp running the 40 watt general-purpose incandescent bulb again. 00:14:19.916 --> 00:14:27.149 And now, here’s that same lamp but with our teeny little 555 indicator running at 20 volts. 00:14:27.149 --> 00:14:29.532 That’s nothing short of amazing, 00:14:29.532 --> 00:14:33.745 and a side-by-side comparison reveals it’s just about as bright. 00:14:33.745 --> 00:14:40.398 It might even be a little brighter, but it’s hard to make a direct comparison because of how drastically whiter the light is. 00:14:40.398 --> 00:14:48.660 In-person this was weird, as it was an incandescent light bulb burning with the appearance of a bright-white LED or fluorescent lamp. 00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:53.751 The brightness is impressive enough on its own, but look at the power draw - 00:14:53.751 --> 00:14:59.258 we’re only using half an amp at 20 volts which works out to about 10 watts, 00:14:59.258 --> 00:15:03.862 so we’re seemingly getting four times as much light per watt. 00:15:03.862 --> 00:15:08.700 That’s amazing and rivals the efficiency of some LED bulbs today. 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:11.299 The catch? 00:15:11.299 --> 00:15:14.437 Well, let’s let the video actually play. 00:15:14.437 --> 00:15:17.656 Immediately the light begins to darken. 00:15:17.656 --> 00:15:21.275 Before long it’s much less bright than the bulb on the left. 00:15:21.275 --> 00:15:28.319 And it lasts a mere 41 seconds before the filament breaks -  and this was a really good showing. 00:15:28.319 --> 00:15:35.040 What’s going on here is that as the filament loses material through evaporation, small weak spots form. 00:15:35.040 --> 00:15:37.882 We can actually see multiple breaks in this footage, 00:15:37.882 --> 00:15:42.547 but the filament keeps falling in on itself and keeping the circuit intact. 00:15:42.547 --> 00:15:45.794 Eventually, though, one of these fractures leaves a gap, 00:15:45.794 --> 00:15:49.136 the circuit is broken, and the light goes out. 00:15:49.136 --> 00:15:55.210 Depending on how that happens, though, you can sometimes bring the bulb back to life with a little percussive maintenance. 00:15:55.210 --> 00:16:00.795 If you manage to complete the circuit, the tungsten will sort of spot-weld itself back together. 00:16:00.795 --> 00:16:02.306 For a while, anyway. 00:16:02.901 --> 00:16:05.701 Here’s the rub: as I’ve hopefully demonstrated, 00:16:05.701 --> 00:16:09.293 the design of the tungsten-filament incandescent light bulb 00:16:09.293 --> 00:16:17.638 was always an exercise in balancing lifespan with energy-efficiency and quality of light output. 00:16:17.638 --> 00:16:25.531 And this is why using the Phoebus cartel as evidence of planned obsolescence rubs me the wrong way. 00:16:25.531 --> 00:16:33.212 By the time it was formed in 1925, scientists and engineers understood the lifespan-efficiency trade-off. 00:16:33.212 --> 00:16:35.220 There are even equations for it! 00:16:35.880 --> 00:16:41.652 We had essentially perfected the tungsten-filament  lamp by the time the cartel was formed, 00:16:41.652 --> 00:16:49.140 and you simply cannot optimize for lifespan without  making the light bulb worse at being a light bulb.   00:16:49.680 --> 00:16:54.882 The 1,000 hour operational target was simply a decent sweet-spot in the middle 00:16:54.882 --> 00:16:59.045 (plus, of course, it was a nice round number figure and those are hard to resist). 00:16:59.045 --> 00:17:03.766 Somebody just had to define what the sweet spot was and make it a standard. 00:17:04.302 --> 00:17:05.876 And that’s what happened. 00:17:06.060 --> 00:17:13.819 To be clear, I’m not forgetting that this was a literal oligopoly with documented collusion efforts that undoubtedly set prices artificially high 00:17:13.819 --> 00:17:16.436 and did all sorts of other slimy things, too. 00:17:16.436 --> 00:17:20.340 I’m not here saying the cartel was some sort of wonderful organization. 00:17:21.120 --> 00:17:27.120 But I feel like ignoring the reality of the efficiency-lifespan tradeoff in tungsten lamps   00:17:27.120 --> 00:17:30.052 is... dishonest. 00:17:30.052 --> 00:17:35.706 It would definitely be insidious if the 2,500 hour light bulbs the cartel sought to extinguish 00:17:35.706 --> 00:17:44.179 were just as good and just as efficient as the agreed upon 1,000 hour light bulb… but that just wasn’t the case. 00:17:44.179 --> 00:17:51.660 Longer life light bulbs were always duller, dimmer, and thus required more power  to produce the same amount of light. 00:17:52.380 --> 00:17:58.140 What I think really bothers me is that you don’t  have to look that deeply to uncover this context.   00:17:58.860 --> 00:18:02.233 Just looking up the cartel on Wikipedia reveals that 00:18:02.233 --> 00:18:09.835 “Some engineers deemed 1,000 hours a reasonable figure to balance the various operational aspects of an incandescent bulb, 00:18:09.835 --> 00:18:16.616 since longer lifespan means reduced efficacy (lumens per  watt): a longer-life bulb of a given wattage 00:18:16.616 --> 00:18:22.751 puts out less light (and therefore proportionally more heat) than a shorter-life bulb of the same wattage. 00:18:22.751 --> 00:18:29.270 Nevertheless, long-life incandescent bulbs were and are available with lifespan ratings up to 2,500 hours, 00:18:29.270 --> 00:18:33.077 and these do in fact produce less light per watt.” 00:18:33.077 --> 00:18:40.136 There is even an excerpt from a report from the Monopolies and Restrictive  Practices Commission of the United Kingdom from 1951 00:18:40.136 --> 00:18:45.054 which says quite plainly that while it might look like hanky panky was going on, 00:18:45.054 --> 00:18:50.760 conflicting factors make it impossible to view the great  light bulb life shortening as anything nefarious. 00:18:51.420 --> 00:18:58.216 But then, I hear you asking, why establish tests  to make sure the bulbs didn’t last too long? 00:18:58.216 --> 00:19:04.500 Assessing a fine to your members for making a light bulb  that’s just a little too good seems pretty iffy.   00:19:05.400 --> 00:19:09.802 Well, again, would it actually be good? 00:19:09.802 --> 00:19:13.717 That’s up for debate, and it’s kind of the whole point I’m making, here. 00:19:13.717 --> 00:19:20.079 Also of note, many of the companies in the cartel were also in the business of running power grids - 00:19:20.079 --> 00:19:23.820 or at least building much of the machinery that made those power grids work. 00:19:24.420 --> 00:19:32.148 They intimately understood that long-life light bulbs would make that part of their business harder and more expensive, 00:19:32.148 --> 00:19:38.466 especially as more and more people got electricity in their homes and electricity demand grew. 00:19:38.466 --> 00:19:46.129 That’s a pretty solid reason to start favoring energy efficiency over lifespan and enforcing a standard to that end. 00:19:46.129 --> 00:19:48.788 Especially when, to repeat myself, 00:19:48.788 --> 00:19:51.737 this is just a little bit of glass and a little bit of wire 00:19:51.737 --> 00:19:57.299 made not by human hands but by machines which could crank out tens of thousands per day. 00:19:57.299 --> 00:20:00.780 They were not by any means precious objects. 00:20:01.320 --> 00:20:09.825 Now, I foresee some of you viewing that light-bulb makers were also being in the business of power generation as evidence of a conflict of interest, 00:20:09.825 --> 00:20:15.175 and maybe it was but they sure didn’t take advantage of that position. 00:20:15.175 --> 00:20:19.181 If their only goal was to maximize the money you gave them, 00:20:19.181 --> 00:20:26.972 well then they should have been selling nothing but long-life light bulbs that needed much more power for the same amount of light. 00:20:26.972 --> 00:20:28.917 But that’s not what happened. 00:20:28.917 --> 00:20:37.020 It was better for all parties involved to run cheap light bulbs as hot as you  could in exchange for lower operating costs. 00:20:37.680 --> 00:20:43.164 I know how some folks feel about higher authorities making decisions on the consumer’s behalf, 00:20:43.164 --> 00:20:48.394 though I can assure you that’s happening all the time in the private sector, you just may not be so aware of it, 00:20:48.394 --> 00:20:57.420 but honestly establishing a 1,000 hour lifespan was the correct decision - or, at the very least, far less insidious than it seems. 00:20:58.020 --> 00:21:01.963 The ultimate evidence of this is that it never changed! 00:21:01.963 --> 00:21:12.375 The cartel dissolved in 1939 and yet, decades later, 1,000 hours remained the operational target for general-purpose light-bulbs. 00:21:12.375 --> 00:21:16.337 Later on you could get so-called “long-life” bulbs if you wanted to, 00:21:16.337 --> 00:21:18.527 much like this appliance bulb here, 00:21:18.527 --> 00:21:23.820 but to produce the same amount of light, they needed more power and thus consumed more energy. 00:21:24.600 --> 00:21:27.337 This Washington Post article from 1981 00:21:27.337 --> 00:21:37.015 points out that to produce the same amount of light as a 75 watt standard-life bulb, you need to move up to a 100 watt long-life bulb. 00:21:37.015 --> 00:21:45.000 Is it really worth a 33 percent increase in energy consumption just to avoid buying a $0.90 light bulb every six months? 00:21:45.540 --> 00:21:48.248 As a matter of fact, objectively 00:21:48.248 --> 00:21:49.528 no! 00:21:49.528 --> 00:21:56.562 In 1981 the average cost for electricity in the US was 6.9 cents per kilowatt hour, 00:21:56.562 --> 00:21:57.597 nice. 00:21:57.597 --> 00:22:08.889 Over the 2,500 hours of lifetime, those extra 25 watts would amount to 62.5 kilowatt-hours of energy expenditure which would cost you $4.31. 00:22:08.889 --> 00:22:17.204 So, by choosing the equally-bright but longer-lasting light bulb, you will spend $4.31 more on energy 00:22:17.204 --> 00:22:20.803 but you won’t even save $2.00 on light bulbs. 00:22:20.803 --> 00:22:27.270 That means, objectively, you were spending more money running one of those long-life bulbs 00:22:27.270 --> 00:22:32.351 than you would if you were just buying standard-life bulbs and changing them more frequently. 00:22:32.351 --> 00:22:41.640 And that’s why the article suggests to use long-life bulbs only in hard-to-reach places where the extra running costs are worth avoiding a bulb change-out. 00:22:42.360 --> 00:22:45.308 And that’s with retail prices for light bulbs. 00:22:45.308 --> 00:22:48.290 Remember how I said they were really cheap to make? 00:22:48.290 --> 00:22:53.697 Well, I was talking with my mom and dad about this video project and they told me something interesting - 00:22:53.697 --> 00:22:58.030 back in the day, ComEd (that’s the power utility here in the Chicago area) 00:22:58.030 --> 00:23:02.706 would just give you free light bulbs when you paid your power bill! 00:23:02.706 --> 00:23:08.159 And it turns out they still had some ComEd-branded  light bulbs in their bag o’ bulbs. 00:23:08.159 --> 00:23:13.680 My grandfather used to say that he never paid for light bulbs  thanks to ComEd’s free light bulb program. 00:23:14.340 --> 00:23:19.481 Oh, by the way, this is a three-way bulb which means it has two filaments inside. 00:23:19.481 --> 00:23:22.689 One of them is 30 watts, and the other is 70 watts. 00:23:22.689 --> 00:23:29.689 Using a second ring-shaped contact on the screw base, a three-way lamp socket can select between one, the other, or both filaments, 00:23:29.689 --> 00:23:36.254 allowing you to operate this as a 30, 70, or 100 watt light bulb. 00:23:36.254 --> 00:23:43.691 The middle contact powers the larger filament, and the cycle of zero, 30, 70, and 70+30 00:23:43.691 --> 00:23:48.872 is the reason some lamps require two clicks to switch between on and off - 00:23:48.872 --> 00:23:54.662 those lamps are meant to use bulbs like this, and then they let you select between bright, brighter, brightest… 00:23:54.662 --> 00:23:56.074 and off. 00:23:56.074 --> 00:23:58.697 You can get LED versions of bulbs like this, 00:23:58.697 --> 00:24:03.240 but they’re usually tucked away with the specialty bulbs in the store and are weirdly expensive. 00:24:04.020 --> 00:24:09.821 Anyway, ComEd, because they had to deal with the operational challenges of running a growing power grid, 00:24:09.821 --> 00:24:13.866 had an incentive to hand out efficient light bulbs like candy 00:24:13.866 --> 00:24:23.453 to keep people from focusing on the wrong metric and buying longer-lasting but less-efficient light bulbs which would strain the power grid more. 00:24:23.453 --> 00:24:26.611 In fact they sort-of still do this today. 00:24:26.611 --> 00:24:30.403 They’re no longer handing out free light bulbs except in special programs, 00:24:30.403 --> 00:24:39.406 but they heavily subsidize energy-efficient light bulbs in stores with instant rebates, and many utilities across the country run similar programs. 00:24:39.406 --> 00:24:43.681 Now, was keeping power demand in-check their only goal? 00:24:43.681 --> 00:24:45.871 Well, that’s hard to say. 00:24:45.871 --> 00:24:54.399 Among all the light bulbs in the bag is a 100 watt ComEd bulb labeled “long-life” so that pokes a hole in the argument. 00:24:54.399 --> 00:25:01.509 Though, to be honest, when powered up that thing is awful bright so I’m not sure how long-lived it actually would be. 00:25:01.717 --> 00:25:06.578 Perhaps the more cynical among you will choose to believe their free light bulb program 00:25:06.578 --> 00:25:12.307 was actually done to pad the power bills of their rate-payers and they were terrible light bulbs, 00:25:12.307 --> 00:25:19.604 though I think the kind of bulb they subsidize today compared to those they don’t points to the exact opposite conclusion. 00:25:19.604 --> 00:25:25.024 Regardless, the broader point here is that incandescent light bulbs were cheap as chips - 00:25:25.024 --> 00:25:34.140 so cheap utilities were willing to just give them away or run exchange programs, and even at retail prices they were less than a dollar apiece. 00:25:34.740 --> 00:25:39.807 The simple fact is the incandescent light bulb was a consumable good, 00:25:39.807 --> 00:25:46.054 and thus to me they simply cannot be used as evidence of planned obsolescence. 00:25:46.054 --> 00:25:54.540 Yes, in a very literal sense their demise is planned - after all, they are engineered to fail after a specific number of hours.   00:25:55.620 --> 00:26:00.303 But you can’t just say that without acknowledging the reasoning behind it - 00:26:00.303 --> 00:26:03.706 they deliberately traded lifespan for efficiency, 00:26:03.706 --> 00:26:07.974 and since incandescent light bulbs aren’t very efficient at all to begin with, 00:26:07.974 --> 00:26:17.820 their operating costs almost always exceeded the purchase cost anyway and it was absolutely worth reducing their lifespan to eek more light out of ‘em.   00:26:18.540 --> 00:26:21.664 If you wanted a bulb with a longer lifespan, 00:26:21.664 --> 00:26:28.664 you either needed to sacrifice efficiency and quality of light which almost always cost you more in the end on your power bill, 00:26:28.664 --> 00:26:35.340 or move to an entirely different lighting technology like fluorescent lights or high-intensity discharge lights,   00:26:35.340 --> 00:26:38.753 and those different technologies had their own trade-offs, too. 00:26:38.753 --> 00:26:45.240 Mainly higher upfront purchase cost and, uh, rather ugly light quality, at least in the beginning. 00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:49.262 But that’s the other thing - those other technologies existed! 00:26:49.262 --> 00:26:57.140 They existed and were on the market and anybody who valued  efficiency and/or longevity could decide to install such light fixtures. 00:26:57.140 --> 00:27:04.420 There was a sea of options by the 1950’s but the good ol’ tungsten filament lamp remained the default 00:27:04.420 --> 00:27:06.963 because it had excellent light quality, 00:27:06.963 --> 00:27:08.422 was good enough, 00:27:08.422 --> 00:27:11.137 and most importantly was cheap. 00:27:11.137 --> 00:27:13.740 And despite the cartel no longer being a thing, 00:27:13.740 --> 00:27:19.260 1,000 hours remained the efficiency-longevity  sweetspot target for most applications. 00:27:19.980 --> 00:27:24.687 The Centennial light in Livermore, California has burned for so long 00:27:24.687 --> 00:27:27.233 because it’s barely been burning. 00:27:27.233 --> 00:27:29.512 Why, exactly, is unclear. 00:27:29.512 --> 00:27:37.712 Supposedly, it should burn as a 30 or 60 watt bulb but has decreased in power over the years for reasons unknown. 00:27:37.712 --> 00:27:40.494 Or perhaps, and here’s where my money is, 00:27:40.494 --> 00:27:45.916 it was simply manufactured incorrectly (after all bulbs were still hand-made back then) 00:27:45.916 --> 00:27:49.020 and it never burned at the wattages it was supposed to. 00:27:49.800 --> 00:27:53.586 Perhaps that’s why Dennis Bernal donated it to the fire department - 00:27:53.586 --> 00:27:57.566 it was only bright enough to serve as a night light so that’s what it went on to do. 00:27:57.566 --> 00:27:59.561 Anyway, the reason isn't important, 00:27:59.561 --> 00:28:07.102 what is important is that the Centennial Light has spent at least the majority of its existence as a very bad light bulb - 00:28:07.102 --> 00:28:09.540 albeit one with notable longevity. 00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:13.140 But now, I need to come up with some sort of conclusion.   00:28:13.860 --> 00:28:17.128 What exactly is the point I’m making here? 00:28:17.128 --> 00:28:24.128 Well… if we wanna get deep I suppose that would be that the world is complex, and you should be skeptical of simple narratives. 00:28:24.128 --> 00:28:30.590 Nobody’s saying that the Phoebus cartel was a wholesome organization,  I’m certainly not anyway, 00:28:30.590 --> 00:28:37.045 but simply saying that “they made sure light bulbs didn’t last too long” leaves out too much of the story.   00:28:37.320 --> 00:28:46.611 If there were a way to make 2,500 hour light bulbs perform like 1,000 hour light bulbs then sure, by all means get out the pitchforks. 00:28:46.611 --> 00:28:48.420 But that just wasn’t possible. 00:28:49.020 --> 00:28:57.349 I also think that, frankly, the incandescent light bulb just doesn’t speak to the spirit of planned obsolescence at all - 00:28:57.349 --> 00:29:01.920 they were simply one of many products that got used up over time. 00:29:02.520 --> 00:29:04.790 When I think of planned obsolescence, 00:29:04.790 --> 00:29:12.480 I think of something like a dishwasher, car, or washing machine; a complex, expensive machine that’s a major purchase.   00:29:13.260 --> 00:29:18.232 Light bulbs weren’t expensive, complex, or meant to be durable. 00:29:18.232 --> 00:29:25.232 At least to my eyes, a light bulb has more in common with, say, laundry detergent than it does a washing machine. 00:29:25.232 --> 00:29:29.918 Just as that box of detergent gets used up and runs out, 00:29:29.918 --> 00:29:33.240 eventually the light bulb gets used up and burns out. 00:29:33.900 --> 00:29:35.975 And to really drive the point home, 00:29:35.975 --> 00:29:43.592 remember that the cartel dissolved in 1939 yet in the years that followed, that reality didn’t change. 00:29:43.592 --> 00:29:48.820 The arrival of halogen lamps which allowed for much hotter filaments and longer runtimes 00:29:48.820 --> 00:29:55.621 thanks to some wild chemical interactions between tungsten and iodine or bromine that I won’t go into other than what I just said 00:29:55.621 --> 00:29:59.819 didn’t even disrupt the practicalities of the light bulb all that much. 00:29:59.819 --> 00:30:07.924 Incandescent light bulbs were a commodity product that had to balance efficiency, lifespan, and upfront purchase cost. 00:30:07.924 --> 00:30:17.220 For general household use, the plain ol’ 1,000 hour tungsten lamp remained right in that sweet spot until, honestly, quite recently. 00:30:17.820 --> 00:30:19.565 Speaking of quite recently, 00:30:19.565 --> 00:30:27.107 perhaps ironically the light bulbs of today are now, for real, actually becoming plagued with planned obsolescence - 00:30:27.107 --> 00:30:31.944 or, at least, lazy engineering with a heaping spoonful of cost-cutting. 00:30:31.944 --> 00:30:37.818 The arrival of the white light-emitting-diode was nothing short of a game changer to the lighting industry, 00:30:37.818 --> 00:30:42.867 and has unlocked extremely efficient and incredibly long-lived lighting products. 00:30:43.730 --> 00:30:46.018 At least… usually. 00:30:46.018 --> 00:30:54.158 I personally have been very fortunate and can count on one hand the number of LED bulb failures I’ve experienced since 2018, 00:30:54.158 --> 00:30:59.480 but sadly there are lots of products out there, especially on the lower-end of the cost spectrum, 00:30:59.480 --> 00:31:01.860 which have terribly flawed designs. 00:31:02.460 --> 00:31:06.720 Overdriven diodes, bad heatsinks, bargain basement capacitors,   00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:12.120 or even just shoddy manufacturing plague far too many LED lighting products,   00:31:12.120 --> 00:31:16.803 as anyone who’s spent any time around Big Clive’s channel would know. 00:31:16.803 --> 00:31:22.056 Of course, there’s bound to be bad or defective product designs out there from time to time, 00:31:22.056 --> 00:31:24.014 purple streetlights anyone? 00:31:24.014 --> 00:31:35.280 But things like shoving more current through the diodes than they’re designed for just to eek out that extra bit of light are inexcusable, yet disturbingly prevalent. 00:31:36.120 --> 00:31:39.563 Still, beware the pitfalls of your biases. 00:31:39.563 --> 00:31:43.966 When a supposed 50,000 hour LED bulb burns out in a year, 00:31:43.966 --> 00:31:46.281 yeah that’s probably gonna annoy you. 00:31:46.281 --> 00:31:49.828 But if you’re old enough to remember the days of tungsten lamps, 00:31:49.828 --> 00:31:52.650 which I realize many of you watching might not be, 00:31:52.650 --> 00:31:56.286 think back to how often you used to have to change them. 00:31:56.286 --> 00:32:01.846 I can remember several times from my childhood when I went to turn on my bedroom light and 00:32:01.846 --> 00:32:02.810 *plink* 00:32:02.810 --> 00:32:09.058 it burnt out in a bright blue flash - and that was just a single light bulb in a ceiling fan. 00:32:09.058 --> 00:32:16.767 Now that I have dozens of LED lights all over the house, many of which run automated routines and come on every night, 00:32:16.767 --> 00:32:22.410 it’s pretty amazing that in the last five years I’ve changed but a few. 00:32:22.410 --> 00:32:25.288 Light bulbs may not not be perfect, no, 00:32:25.288 --> 00:32:28.115 but they sure are better. 00:32:28.978 --> 00:32:31.498 ♫ optimally smooth jazz ♫ 00:32:32.601 --> 00:32:35.580 …to guarantee you’ll have to buy another one before too long. 00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:39.057 That might have been a perfect take but I wanna do it again,  00:32:39.057 --> 00:32:42.546 Though I won’t comment on what may or may not be happening today 00:32:42.546 --> 00:32:43.524 [bong from phone] butj… 00:32:43.524 --> 00:32:44.080 sh-! 00:32:45.420 --> 00:32:46.791 Well, that was my fault. 00:32:46.791 --> 00:32:51.426 It’s literally just a little bit of glass, a little bit of wire, and a little bit of me- 00:32:51.426 --> 00:32:53.359 yeah I picked up the wrong one. 00:32:53.359 --> 00:32:55.906 All things emit electromagnetic radiation, 00:32:55.906 --> 00:32:58.317 and as they get hotter, they start to emit irradia--- 00:32:58.317 --> 00:32:59.948 what the heck just happened there? 00:32:59.948 --> 00:33:03.251 …with the appliance bulb and it shouldn't be that dim. 00:33:03.480 --> 00:33:05.122 Well… 00:33:05.122 --> 00:33:06.178 that’s distracting. 00:33:06.178 --> 00:33:09.080 Was keeping power demand in-check their only go? 00:33:09.080 --> 00:33:11.459 Now, geez. 00:33:11.459 --> 00:33:11.959 Now, 00:33:11.959 --> 00:33:13.971 Which works out to 10 watts. 00:33:13.971 --> 00:33:15.276 So we’re see... 00:33:15.276 --> 00:33:16.311 oh crap. 00:33:17.918 --> 00:33:20.000 I hope this video was illuminating! 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.415 There's more to this story than it seems on the surface, and I was hoping I could shed a little light on it. 00:33:24.415 --> 00:33:27.157 There are definitely a lot of burning questions around light bulbs, and it's a hot topic. 00:33:27.157 --> 00:33:30.644 I hope I helped extinguish some of your fears, but now you can bask in the warm glow of a nice LED. 00:33:30.644 --> 00:33:32.977 Or a cool glow, if that's your thing.