Disputed event: Founding of the Phoebus light bulb cartel in 1924.
First allegations: The US government got interested in the 1940s, the British Parliament in 1951; the cartel was exposed in 1953.
And they would have got away with it too: World War 2 intervened and made it too difficult for the cartel to collude.
The invention of the light bulb crumpled into a mess of who-invented-what patent disputes, which held up mass production and large consumer markets until well into the 20th century.
Then, in what could be termed a light-bulb moment, the various inventors set aside their differences and combined their efforts to start making money from their invention. They shared patents and design ideas and divvied up market territories among themselves.
Light bulbs were huge. They were smokeless, easy to turn on and off and — once mass production began — they sold like hot cakes. Companies that manufactured them, such as Philips and General Electric, are still powerful today.
As technology progressed, so did quality, and there arose the next problem: the lights stopped wearing out. Shareholders were incandescent. Something needed to be done.
Enter the "Convention for the Development and Progress of the International Incandescent Electric Lamp Industry".
This founded a Swiss company, Phoebus, to ensure "the advantageous exploitation of their manufacturing capabilities in the production of lamps, ensuring and maintaining a uniformly high quality, increasing the effectiveness of electric lighting and increasing light use to the advantage of the consumer".
Or, in plain English, make light bulbs blow after no more than about 1000 hours.
