Bloomberg: The Curious History of a Forgotten Lightbulb Cartel

The first meeting of this shadowy organization took place on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland on Christmas Eve in 1924. The attendees called themselves the “Convention for the Development and Progress of the International Incandescent Electric Lamp Industry.” But Phoebus — from Latin and Greek for “bright” — sounded way cooler. The name stuck.
[...] There was also a bigger problem that plagued their business. Years of tinkering had yielded bulbs that could last for thousands of hours. In fact, a few from this era are still working today. It was a terrible business model.
The cartel decided to take action. Having spent years lengthening the lifespan of bulbs, the companies of the cartel now worked to shorten it. They formed a working group known as the “1,000 Hours Life Committee” tasked with building an inferior bulb. [...]
The cartel poured resources into the project, developing the technical expertise necessary to manufacture lower-quality bulbs in a predictable, consistent fashion. These efforts went hand in hand with an audit system designed to force manufacturers to conform to the 1,000-hour goal.
If the samples lasted between 800 and 1,750 hours, the factory could sell the rest of the lot without penalty. But if bulbs lasted between 1,750 and 2,000 hours, the guilty company would pay a fine of 20 Swiss francs per 1,000 bulbs sold. Fines increased the longer bulbs burned: samples that lasted over 3,000 hours would be fined at the rate of 200 francs per 1,000 bulbs sold.
The system worked. Bulbs had lasted an average of 2,500 hours before the cartel’s formation. A decade later, Phoebus had driven that number down to 1,200.

via ailev@lj