“With Coca Cola, for example, they said: Why should we use a glass that doesn’t break? We make money with our glasses. […] The dealers said understandably: Who would saw off the branch he was sitting on?”
Capitalism strikes again
Isn’t this similar to the light bulb situation? Whereby making light-bulbs more fragile, and less reliable they increase the sales profits?
The Phoebus cartel, the beginnings of planned obsolescence.
The amazing thing is how not only did a long lasting light bulb get designed early on, but that the later bulbs were designed to fail specifically after a given point (1000 hours). That’s precision.
I also blame Edward Bernays, the father of consumerism/consumption.
“Torches of Freedom” lol
I found this to be a great video discussing why lightbulbs are engineered the way they are. TLDR: reducing lifespan increases efficiency and light quality
They used to simply last longer, too. Fragility be damned.
I miss the days when LED light bulbs were basically forever lived.
I want to start a company that focuses on creating shit that lasts. Ain’t nobody getting rich off of my company, but the people get goods that they’ll never have to replace, basically. Sadly I’ve got ADD so this will never happen, I’m sorry y’all.
At least you tried
Yeah, it’s the thought that counts.
Cheap drivers that drive the cheap LED modules too hot without enough cooling.
I have a set of these and one of them got broken by a moving company in the ultimate irony.
“Challenge accepted!” -your mover
This makes me sad in a weird way. Same shit happened with light bulbs.
The lightbulbs thing was (possibly) different. There’s some physical limits on the performance of lightbulbs so the time to failure test was more of a proxy to make sure bulbs of a certain wattage were outputting similar strength and color light.
https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY?si=UQzU-Vn2E01Bs4sm
I don’t know if there were other reasons this glass tech didn’t catch on besides the obvious capitalism issues, but the lightbulb thing is definitely a misunderstood piece of trivia.
Ha I knew someone would bring up Tech Connections. Both vids feature fascinating science history!
Also has led to a vibrant market for old Pyrex, made with borosilicate before they switched to soda-lime. Borosilicate is generally much more resistant to thermal shock (though there are some advantages to soda lime, but the big reason is that it’s cheaper)
I discovered the difference the hard way in college when I shattered a pyrex measuring cup by pouring boiling water into it. Four cups of boiling water and glass shards everywhere!
Look for PYREX, not pyrex. They switched over in the 1990s, but sometimes you can get lucky at thrift stores.
Now make phonescreens with that glass!
As the article mentions, Gorilla Glass is actually made via a similar process!
Some German engineered more efficient ways to drink beer with indestructible glass? That dude probably got turbo laid.
I can’t find anywhere that sells this type of glass any more.
