Tony Talks History
The History Behind Your Lighbulb - The Phoebus Cartel
In 1924 the biggest light bulb makers on Earth met in Geneva and agreed that a bulb should last a thousand hours. Then they fined each other for making bulbs that lasted longer.
It is real, and the paperwork survived.
The numbers in this video
1,000Hours. The standard life the cartel agreed for a normal household bulb.Source: Markus Krajewski, "The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy", IEEE Spectrum, Sept 2014
1,500 to 2,500Hours that good bulbs were lasting by the early 1920s, before the agreement.Source: Markus Krajewski, "The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy", IEEE Spectrum, Sept 2014
1,200Hours. The average life of a bulb by 1934, roughly, down from about 1,800 in 1926. The cartel's own figure was 1,205.Source: Markus Krajewski, "The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy", IEEE Spectrum, Sept 2014
421MBulbs the members sold in a year, roughly, four years after selling about 336 million in 1926 to 1927. The recorded figure is 420.8 million.Source: Markus Krajewski, "The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy", IEEE Spectrum, Sept 2014
1M+Hours the fire station bulb in California has burned. It has been on since 1901, apart from a few short breaks.Source: Wikipedia, Guinness 2025
€25MThe fine Apple paid in France in 2020 for not telling people that updates slowed down old iPhones.Source: Lexology
Every number has a source
Chapters
- 0:00The Bulb That Never Went Out
- 2:31How a Bulb Dies
- 4:121919: The Glut
- 4:471924: The Meeting
- 6:16The Quotas
- 6:54The Thousand Hours
- 9:431927: The Cheat
- 11:291932: The Torch Bulbs
- 12:00The Defence
- 14:281939: The Collapse
- 15:201949: The Trial
- 16:242016: The Dubai Bulb
- 17:03The Verdict
- 17:36What Survived
What we left out
Claims we found and could not stand behind, so they are not in the video.
How big the fines for long-lasting bulbs were. Secondary sources disagree on the amounts, so the video gives none.
How many sets of batteries a torch bulb was meant to last. The counts vary between summaries, so it was left out.
15 January 1925 as the start of the cartel. One source gives that as the day the company was formed. The video uses 23 December 1924, the day the agreement was signed.
