You have been mislead about lightbulbs

There's a story that goes something like this: In 1925, lightbulb manufactures secretly colluded to standardized lifespans at 1,000 hours. They would test each other's products to ensure compliance. This is true. At the time, many bulbs lasted longer than one thousand hours. This is true. Therefore, this was done so that people would always need to buy more light bulbs and increase their profits. This is wrong, but it's the type of wrong that cites its sources and hides in the part you'd never think to fact check: The assumption that a longer lasting lightbulb is a good product. In truth, increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way... but people think they want a long lasting lightbulb: the purpose of standardizing was to avoid a race to the bottom. A old-school lightbulb is a rather simple device: A thin tungsten wire (~20 μm) sealed inside a glass envelope to protect it from air. When current is applied, the wire gets white hot and starts glowing. The most…