{"id":14112,"date":"2014-09-26T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=14112"},"modified":"2014-09-26T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T15:37:07","slug":"the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=14112","title":{"rendered":"The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The cartel\u2019s grip on the lightbulb market lasted only into the 1930s. Its far more enduring legacy was to engineer a shorter life span for the incandescent lightbulb. By early 1925, this became codified at 1,000 hours for a pear-shaped household bulb, a marked reduction from the 1,500 to 2,000 hours that had previously been common. Cartel members rationalized this approach as a trade-off: Their lightbulbs were of a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.modernmechanix.com\/mags\/PopularScience\/3-1935\/ge_mazda.jpg\">higher quality, more efficient, and brighter burning<\/a> than other bulbs. They also cost a lot more. Indeed, all evidence points to the cartel\u2019s being motivated by profits and increased sales, not by what was best for the consumer. In carefully crafting a lightbulb with a relatively short life span, the cartel thus hatched the industrial strategy now known as planned obsolescence..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/geek-life\/history\/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy\/\">The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy &#8211; IEEE Spectrum<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cartel\u2019s grip on the lightbulb market lasted only into the 1930s. Its far more enduring legacy was to engineer a shorter life span for the incandescent lightbulb. By early 1925, this became codified at 1,000 hours for a pear-shaped &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=14112\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[645,47],"class_list":["post-14112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-history","tag-monopolistic-practices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14113,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14112\/revisions\/14113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}