The cartel enforced production quotas and bulb lifetimes with a system of monetary fines, backed by the power of GE’s patent portfolio. This was about selling more bulbs and making more money. However, that last step, halving bulb lifetime, would increase brightness only between 11%-16%, while doubling sales. Again, brightness increases were touted as the reason. It wasn’t only household lighting that took a hit: flashlight bulbs originally lasting for three sets of batteries were reduced to two, with a proposal to limit their lifetime to a single set. Archived documents show that significant research was expended to devise bulbs that lasted their 1,000 appointed hours and no more.

Purportedly imposed to increase quality, efficiency, and light output, the new 1,000 hour limit also resulted in many more bulb sales. Previous bulbs had burned for a much longer 1,500 – 2,500 hours. As discussed by Markus Krajewski in “The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy”, the cartel assigned territories to member companies, limited production, and dictated a shortened 1,000 hour bulb life. Join me after the break for some background on the light bulb cartel from the days of incandescent bulbs (not a joke, a cartel controlled the life of your bulbs), and for the destruction of some modern LED bulbs to see why the lifetimes are clocking in a lot lower than the original wave of LED replacements.Īny discussion of light bulb lifetime would be incomplete without mention of the Phoebus cartel, an international organization formed in 1924 by the world’s leading light bulb manufacturers to manipulate the bulb market. So, what happened to those 100,000 hour residential LED bulbs? Were the initial estimates just over-optimistic? Was it all marketing hype? Or, did we not know enough about LED aging to predict the true useful life of a bulb? And yes, these are brand-name bulbs from Cree and GE. Others claimed only 7,500 or 15,000 hours. But during a recent trip to the hardware store the longest advertised lifetime I found was 25,000 hours. Early adopters of LED lighting will remember 50,000 hour or even 100,000 hour lifetime ratings printed on the box.

Battery n bulbs