Centennial

Longest continuously 'on' lightbulb

~ The long-lasting bulb, known as Centennial light, was switched on since 1901. Surprisingly it is not even connected to a light switch though it has backup generators.

~ It was originally supposed to be emitting around 30-60 watts, but right now it just emits around 4 watts.

~ The Phoebus Cartel , the companies who manufactured bulbs way before the 1920s, worked together to help each other by controlling the supply of lightbulbs.

~ Everything seemed fine until the Cartel got this biggest threat, the everlasting bulbs

_See, initially the Cartel did their best to make long-lasting bulbs but once they were almost perfected, the Cartel's sales dropped around 40 million which was not what they expected.

- Such a huge loss changed the Cartel's mindset and hence they decided to make it their mission to reduce approximately 1000 years of the lifespan of the lightbulbs.

- They claimed that they were doing that for increased efficiency but  soon after they implemented the *reduction in the lifespan* , their profits skyrocketted...this tells us an another story entirely.

-The Phoebus Cartel fell apart in the 1930s and the WW2 destroyed their buisness as they were not able to withstand other lightbulb companies...Even though they fell apart, the other companies still follow their tactics.

~ Similar planned obsolescence was done by Apple Company too for which, in 2020, they had to pay a hundreds of millions of dollars as lawsuit but well, that was nothing in front of the profit they made all those years.


Thanks!


PS, for visual info, check this out

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