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Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated

Technology Connections · 2.3M views · 2023-07-16 · 33:33

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Overview

Technology Connections examines why light bulbs have the lifespans they do, including the real history of the Phoebus cartel. He shows that bulb life trades off against brightness and efficiency rather than being simple planned obsolescence.

On Hacker News

HN's go-to link for correcting the lightbulb conspiracy myth, giving an engineer's view of the lifespan versus efficiency tradeoff.

Recommended by 9 HN people across 7 months · HN mentions 2023–2026

Topics

Engineering & making (other)Repair, teardowns & right to repairMicroeconomics & behavioral economics
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incandescent bulbsphoebus cartelplanned obsolescenceefficiencylighting

What people said

samat · 2024-07 · Strong recommendation

There is an excellent video about Lightbulb Cartel by Technology Connections, highly recommended if you want an engineers perspective, with no 'great conspiracy' hype. [VIDEO]

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mreome · 2026-07 · Recommendation

For an even deeper dive into this topic... Technology Connections: Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated [VIDEO]

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RulerOf · 2024-11 · Recommendation

It's true that the Phoebus cartel arranged to have light bulbs die after a certain number of hours, but bulb lifetime is a trade off between lumens, filament life, and energy consumption. The cartel-defined lifetime limit sits very close to the sweet spot for all of those metrics for incandescent bulbs. Technology Connections explained this well in a video about a year ago: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Technology Connections, played through YouTube.

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