A short history of planned obsolescence (2024)

Most of us know that things don’t last for as long as they used to. People will tell you about using household appliances previously owned by their parents and even grandparents. Last year I bought a third-hand vintage Husqvarna Viking sewing machine, manufactured in the 1960s, which still works well. Newer household appliances will last for only 10 years, if you’re lucky.

Many of us believe that it’s only recently that goods were deliberately designed not to last, and certainly we have an economy that has encouraged and depended on the disposability of products. Yet, the deliberate design of goods not to last started decades ago.

A good starting point is 100 years ago when lightbulb manufacturers had a problem because their lightbulbs lasted too long. If the lightbulbs’ lives were shorter, the manufacturers would sell more and increase their revenue and profits.

In 1925 major lightbulb manufacturers including Osram and Philips incorporated the Phoebus Cartel in Geneva to solve the problem. (Phoebus refers to Apollo the sun god and therefore light.) The manufacturers agreed to reduce the life of their lightbulbs from an average of 2500 hours to 1000 hours and increase prices. If members did not meet the requirements, they were levied significant fines by the Phoebus Cartel.

While World War II put an end to the Phoebus Cartel, its demise did not turn back the clock and lightbulbs’ lives continued to be artificially short for decades. Not until the relatively recent LED and similar lightbulbs did lightbulbs begin to last for significantly longer.

The process of designing and manufacturing products that don’t last as long as they should is commonly called ‘planned obsolescence’. The term is credited to Bernard London, who wrote a pamphlet in 1932, ‘Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence’ – although as described below, London meant something different to what we think of the term today. London lamented that “There is little demand for new goods when people make their old and worn-out things do, by keeping them longer than they should.”

Take Henry Ford’s Model T released in 1908. Ford wanted to create and sell an affordable tool that would not wear out and in his memoir in 1922 wrote: “We want to construct some kind of machine that will last forever” and “We want the man who buys one of our products never to have to buy another.”

Which was the exact opposite of what the economy needed according to London, whose plan was that the US government would force people to purchase new goods and therefore create jobs. Products would be assigned a finite life and people would be fined if they used the products beyond that time.

London’s plan didn’t eventuate; however, London’s ultimate goal of people not keeping goods for a long time came to pass. In the same year as London’s pamphlet, two industrial designers, Roy Sheldon and Egmont Arens, published a book, Consumer Engineering: A New Technique for Prosperity. Sheldon and Arens had a similar aim of revitalising US manufacturers to support US citizens. The authors argued society would be better off if products were designed to be thrown away and replaced.

Given manufacturers’ profit motive, not surprisingly Sheldon and Arens’ proposal and the practice of planned obsolescence spread. One of many examples was nylon stockings. At first nylon stockings, invented by DuPont and first sold in 1939, were nearly indestructible. DuPont realising sales would be limited after the initial round of sales, tasked its scientists to remanufacture the stockings so they would not last as long and women would be forced to buy more.

Car manufacturers upped the ante and employed an additional tactic: persuade people they need to replace their current perfectly good car with a new, shining model.

General Motors, the US car manufacturer, became one of the most valuable companies in the world in the 1960s, in part by persuading people to buy cars more often. By coincidence, DuPont gained a controlling shareholding in General Motors in 1921 and began to experiment with painting cars different colours – prior to that cars were black, releasing the first different colour car in 1924. General Motors then introduced a new colour and other design features each year, so its cars dated quickly. General Motors was successful. In 1934 the average length of new car ownership in the US was five years, by 1955 it had reduced to two years.

General Motors’ tactics wouldn’t be so bad if they were confined to cars because it meant more second-hand cars in circulation, benefiting those unable to afford new ones. The harm comes with the combination of planned obsolescence and consumers chasing after the shiny and new and throwing away usable products, which clutter landfills.

This powerful combination has come at a great cost to us and the planet. As the sewing machine and other examples show, it is possible to design long-lasting goods. We need to make it a practice to reward manufacturers who are doing the right thing and purchase goods designed to last and keep them for their natural life spans, with a few repairs along the way.