Purpose
The cartel served as a convenient way to lower costs and worked to cap the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1000 hours, while at the same time hiking prices without fear of competition. Members' bulbs were regularly tested and fines were levied for bulbs that lasted more than 1000 hours. A 1929 table lists exactly how many Swiss francs had to be paid, depending on the exceeding hours of lifetime. This was not public knowledge at the time, and the cartel could point to standardization of light bulbs as an alternative rationale for the organization.
The cartel claimed that 1000 hours was a reasonable optimum life expectancy for most bulbs, and that a longer lifetime could be obtained only at the expense of efficiency: more electricity is wasted as heat and less light is obtained.
The Phoebus Cartel divided the world’s lamp markets into three categories:
- home territories, the home country of individual manufacturers
- British overseas territories, under control of Associated Electrical Industries, Osram, Philips, and Tungsram
- common territory, the rest of the world
Read more about this topic: Phoebus Cartel
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest,—should you choose to go on with my chronicle,—simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure to others.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“And the purpose of the many stops and starts will be made clear:
Backing into the old affair of not wanting to grow
Into the night, which becomes a house, a parting of the ways
Taking us far into sleep. A dumb love.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)