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This is the story of how communists made nearly unbreakable glass. Why is not everywhere today? Or is it?
Sources:
docs.google.com/document/d/1l...
Music:
Artlist:
Morphlexis - Blown Again
John Dada & the Weathermen - Chamber Stress
Dover Quartet - Serenade in G Major Eine kleine Nachtmusik - Mvt 1 Mozart
Ardie Son - Arcade
Borden Lulu - Lost Letters
Angel Salazar - IX
Hans Johnson - Leopards Stalk
Risian - Inevitable
Epidemicsound:
Marten Moses - Killer Instinct
Ava Low - Chaos Theory
Etienne Roussel - Dark Times
Ritchie Everett - Snooty Fox
Craft Case - The Loose Ends
David Celeste - A Mathematical Genius
Lennon Hutton - 3 AM
Brendon Moeller - Apparent Solution
Van Sandano - Antidote X
Christian Andersen - A Changeling
Wendy Marcini - Catch up Later
Magnus Ludvigsson - Hungarian Charade
Megan Wofford - Manifest
Lens Distortions:
Time Piece
Timetables (No Pulse, High Percussion)
3D Assets:
Qifan Zhang - An Old Cheap Room in Chinatown
sketchfab.com/3d-models/an-ol...
Drcrazzie - German Armoured Division WWII Tiger Tank
sketchfab.com/3d-models/germa...
Scans and textures - Simple Hydraulic Press
sketchfab.com/3d-models/simpl...
Lucky581 - Old Chair
sketchfab.com/3d-models/old-c...
Osho - Soviet TV KVN-49
sketchfab.com/3d-models/sovie...
Max_f5_studio - Worker APL
sketchfab.com/3d-models/worke...
_____
Armchair documentaries, almost weekly
You don't market unbreakable glass to people that sell glass, you market to the people that use the glass.
They should have opened a store in the west and let customers roll in
@@Dantick09The capitalists that sold glass at the time would have seen to it that the product never saw the light of day and the sellers of the indestructible glass taken care of
Precisely, & people will pay good money for such a product.
Or you sell to the runt of the glass-making companies. Someone that could benefit from going from 5% market share to 50% market share in say 5 years.
yet they only buy it once
I thought I was about to hear a story where some mad scientists had made a glass which gave out radiation poisining, but no. The fact that nobody was interested in such a product for their consumeirs is insane. I get a company like Coca-Cola, but surely someone would be interested
No, because if the glass doesn't break... then there is no reason to buy new glass. So if you're selling people glass.. yeah sure you'd make a lot of money selling them the superior, unbreakable glass. But when most people have your glass at home.. they'll stop buying from you and you'll make less money. The light bulb makers are literally the ones that made lamps so good they kept working for decades. And So they came together and decided to make their lamps worse, so they break over time. That way they could make a lot more money. That said, the soviets could have just started their own company in the west and sold directly to consumers. Which would have made them money, "proved" that soviet manufacturing is better because they don't have planned absolescence (obviously most western products were still better but everyone would be talking about the unbreakable soviet glass). And it would have hurt an entire sector of businesses in the west. Their leadership was just completely incompetent P.s. the guy claiming that the light bulb people never came together to agree on a planned obsolescence is full of sh. My comments keep getting shadowed. But the Phoebus cartel was 100% a thing. And it had nothing to do with brightness. Instead they claimed they limited the life span because "lamps get less efficient after a thousand hours" ..
@@3choblast3r4how naive can you be? The soviet Union selling Something in the West that would be Superior to products in the West? You do know that The West heavily Blocked stuff Like that, especially If it meant showing their "Superior" manufacturing. The cold war wasnt onesided. The West would have never allowed the soviet Union to massively Undercut Western manufacturing. That only happened as soon as China came around and they did it in a way it appealed to Western Capitalists - by minimizing Labor Costs while Not being Seen as a threat to the West. Now the West relies on Chinese manufacturing which they wouldnt have allowed if China was Back then already Seen as a threat as was the soviet Union at all Times.
You're wrong have lamps. To get brighter and whiter light out of incandescent bulbs you need to crank the power high to increase temperature. The higher the temperature the more tungsten (or any incandescent) materials starts to (essentially) vaporate. So yes old incandescent bulbs could last forever theoretically, however you would be producing barely even s glow from the bulb. (Not to method that the evaporated filament lays as soot on the inside of the bulb effectively darkening the glass). Please see the video about incandescent lights on the technology connections KZhead channel for better explanation and real world examples!
Can't edit comment ugh. Ignore typos I'm on a mobile browser. I meant to say *you're wrong about lamps
@@3choblast3r4 or yknow they didn't sell it because there is no reason to make more durable glass when plastic for example coveres every use case it might have?
Microwaves. I'm still using the microwave my dad bought in 1985. It gets used on average once a day, and hasn't broken once. Meanwhile microwaves built today last between 5-10 years. Not 40+ If it ever breaks I'm getting it repaired, no way am I replacing it.
It's because there is basically only one microwave manufacturer left today, that makes the insides of the microwave! The cheapest one! Imagine all cars using the same motor and transmission... Also when microwaves appeared on the marked , they were expensive high-end products, for the wealthy. Many of these old microwaves could measure the amount of energy absorbed by the thing in the microwaves radiation chamber (imagine a high powered NFC system). So you could dial in how well you wanted the meal to be cooked and the microwave would stop when it was done. While with present day microwave you can make them into a plastic like brick, that would have never happened in those old ones. But how much would you spend on a microwave today for that feature? Surely not enough to justify it getting made.
@@TremereTT You mean Midea? They make ~90% of consumer-grade microwaves, but not all of them :) And there's a higher diversity of actual manufacturers in the commercial-grade microwave ovens.
@@ShadowwwLFS midea makes the cheap cyclotrons right ? I was well informed at one point in time a few years ago ...but the details have faded away
Be careful of survivor bias. You are likely to come across one of the 1985 microwaves that survived. What you will almost never come across, is any of the numerous 1985 microwaves that have long gone to the bin, decades ago. Tho I do agree that on average home appliances have lost in durability, but they also tend to be much cheaper than in the early days. I remember our first microwave in the early 90s, it was a small event at home, a significant investment, and my parents were living on two wages (it also hasn't survived the test of time). Nowadays I can get an entry-level one brand new for like, what, 60 bucks? Maybe $100 if I want a fancy one that also grills?
Freezers made 60 years ago still run continuously.
Pharmaceutical companies also ask Is curing patients a sustainable business?
Answer: "no we hate it, hard pass"
well, sure it is. They're not interesting in sustaining anything but growing profits. People are always going to get sick. The problem is, the pharma heads have conspired with politicos on how to make people just sick enough that the products pharma sells will make them feel better.
Fun fact: In 1999 the Czech republic had made a film called "Pelíšky" and in one of the scenes there is small talk about the unbreakable glasses breaking.
"to bylo málo"
“A KOMU TÍM PROSPĚJETE CO?”
To bylo málo **zvuk rozbití skla** A KOMU TÍM PROSPĚJETE??
I was about to say that! Pelisky jsou nejlepsi klasika!
yeah and then the dude broke it XD
In technical college (Berufsfachschule here in Germany) one of my teachers was proud of a lathe in the teaching workshop saying it was produced in the very city the school was in, was of exceptional quality and never broke down or had any problems despite being quite old already. But then he went on that the manufacturer quickly went out of business because their customers never bought replacement machines or spare parts, so the sales plummeted :/
Same type of problem with refrigerators made in America in the 1950s-60s. They ran forever so the sales/service suffered. That's when "planned obsolescence and failure" were incorporated into design. There is a cooling unit in a business not far from me that has run for 60 years with only the occasional scheduled service. There is a Japanese philosopher/businessman that developed a philosophy of creating long-term products. He stated the culture must change to sustain the companies that focused on quality. I like his ideas. Imagine passing down products of superior quality. The environmental impact of consumerism would be greatly reduced.
@@olliefoxx7165 It's only best to be mindful about the fact that such a transition won't just be uncomfortable, but the perfect breeding grounds for a reactionary Insurgency to take root.
It would mean that there were no more customers interested to buy an unbreakable lathe. So, the world must have been saturated with unbreakable lathes at that moment and nobody was buying new ones. Maybe the lathe was not breaking because nobody actually used it to make anything?
@@Iamwolf134 Yes. It is idealistic I agree. Many things would have to be done to make such a thing palatable to society.
RealSven: name of lathe? Town?
I’m an Italian mechanical engineer. Chemically tempered glass is not “for free”, it have a higher cost. But surely improve the durability of objects made in glass. A lot. Note: the thin layer of glass of your smartphone is actually chemically tempered but it is possible to brake. And when it happens, all the elastic energy is released, that is quite dangerous. Clearly a thicker layer of glass becomes a really interesting, as you can see in the video.
Yes--and that's one other thing they didn't mention. When it does break, and it can happen spontaneously, it can be quite bad.
Smartphones are made to break. I'm not saying that a shock-durable smartphone has to look like one of the Hammer ones, but some rubber shielding could help a lot.
@@piotrmalewski8178 That's a good point when it comes to the glass backs. It is totally ree tar dead that they don't have titanium backs or something. That much is a complete scam, but for some reason people just take it in stride, or they like the idea of that shiny back which they immediately cover with rubber. Makes no sense whatsoever although I bet some of the smaller cell phone manufacturers make more durable phones. But as far as the glass on the front, it's totally there to be durable and scratch resistant. Not everything can be explained in this world.
@@friendlyfire7861 What kills the screen in smartphones is that they don't have much shock absorbing material around to actually absorb the kinetic energy when falling, that's why the screen cracks even if it's made of otherwise excellent glass. It's like leasing a car from a lease company. They'll give you excellent brake pads and discs, but it's just a gimmick and the brakes might fail randomly because they won't pay for caliper conservation. For a lease company it's better financially to spend more on quality parts, save on maintenance and then charge you for premature wear of brakes because as a user you cannot prove it was a failing, not properly conserved caliper, and not your driving style. Same for phone makers; they'll sell you excellent glass but it doesn't really matter because the case design puts it exposed to full force of impact so you have to buy new one, because the screen is designed to be integral with the front glass and they charge absurd prizes for new screens.
@@piotrmalewski8178 Hmm... makes sense. I once had a "case" that was just a rubber band that went around the edges but did not cover the back at all. It worked fine! I'm not bad about dropping the phone, but I bet even that minimal protection on the corners did 80% of the work of keeping it from cracking when it did fall.
The lightbulb cartel isn't the whole story. While it's true that they favored lightbulbs that would have to be replaced, those light bulbs are also better at making light. The key difference is how long and thick the filament is. A longer filament passes less current and a thicker filament heats up less. If the lightbulb is running at peak light producing temperatures it sublimates tungsten from the surface of the filament and it gets thinner and brighter until it burns out. If you start way at the other end of the spectrum you have a bulb which will last forever, but will always be using way more electricity per unit light than it needs to.
Shhhh, don't you dare think about what you're told. Couple that with the fact that no company could ever reach the state of GE and the like, capable of enacting such a thing, without deliberate and repeated government intervention to quash competition.
That's true that old light bulbs using filaments were not made to break as much people think. It's just the balance between the amount of light per wat that mattered, the downside of bright glowing light bulbs is shorter life. Currently we have LED light and they are made to break faster... We can make LED lights that are durable and produce the same amount of light while sometimes being even more efficient. They just need to sell them. In Dubai they have LED light bulbs with a much higher count of LEDs while having the same light output - they last much much longer.
@@adrianzakrzewski4235 the LED's for sale 10 years ago lasted a very long time but were also north of $20, you could drop over a hundred just putting bulbs in a single room, nowadays they don't last as long but they cost $2, use less power, and are brighter (back then 60W equivalents were rare and more expensive, 100w equivalents were nonexistent) the current scam is integrated fixtures where you have to replace the whole damned thing because there is no separate bulb to replace
... No. This continues today. There are legal documents released from court that disputes your statements. Most LED lights that burn out are infact doing so by design in their circuits not their diodes. Whe throw billions of un recycled functional LEDs in non functional lights containing trace amounts of some of our rarest resources. Recycling™️ today has defrauded the world. As we consumers only truly recycle aluminum and glass both at great carbon footprints and only because of the financial benefit.
@@user-dn5bx2iu3e It is right that today they do make LEDs die faster. And as you said it's not because of the LED chips themselves but the overall design and circuit that drives them on the edge of their maximum ratings. I repaired and modified some of my LED lights in house when they failed and I don't expect them now to fail anytime soon. But the thing about old light bulbs is a bit more complicated. While they wanted to make light bulbs to die too, they also made them more efficient and with more white light. Unfortunately they also die faster, but they weren't that expensive to be honest and you could still buy some robust lights. I think gas tubes and all the fluorescent light are the worst. While they can work for a long time - they are more toxic and all that. In public buildings and other similar places it was a pretty good idea, but not in homes where they sold some crappy twisted bulbs.
I am living in Germany and never knew that we have unbreakable glass for over 50 years
Same.
Maybe because you are on the West side (wrong side 😂)?
Same. But right after watching this video, I looked it up, and I noticed that there are people selling those kinds of glasses on eBay. Next time I need to buy new glassware, I might want to those. And yes, my entire family were on the west side and only due to university I moved over to Leipzig.
Ich hab noch 2 sind mir sehr heilig 😂😂
@@Jack-kk2dv Gib eins ab jetzt! So wollte es die DDR!
I have a set of unbreakable plates my mother bought 50 years ago. They are light weight, can be put into an oven, or microwave. She paid $10.00 for a set of 20 plates, and 20 bowls. I still have them and use them everyday. I have to say I have only broken one plate. My husband set it on top of the truck and for got it up there, it slide off the hood and he ran over it with a loaded Semi truck. I am proud to say it didn't break until the back set of tires rolled over it.
🤯
What makers mark is on the back if any ?
Probably contains lead
That sounds like *Corelle* glassware! It looks like ceramic but it's extremely light and nearly unbreakable glass. Best dishes in the world! Anytime I have guests eating at my place they always ask about my plates lol
Planned obsolescence is a crime against humanity.
1:45: Hilarious when you speak of the GDR, and the images you show are definitely from Munich, Bavaria, deep western Germany first the Karlstor at the Stachus, and then the towers of the Frauenkirche. Nice to see so old images of my city.
Imagine the true quality of stuff we could have if corporations weren't so sinnfully greedy, so utterly devoid of morals and goodness. Think of how many things that break regularly that just, wouldn't. Phones, ovens, washing machines, fridges, cups, electronics. It truly seems like greed triumphs over all.
The prevalence of greed is merely the current sociotechnical order. It and its practitioners can and will be expropriated.
@@draw4everyone And you will do this?
@@rogerkeleshian2215 yes, how did you know?
@draw4everyone Army, navy, airforce, popular support you got em? If not, then I don't see much happening.
@@rogerkeleshian2215 tru
"How many products around us are worse than they have to be." Bought a new Vacuum Cleaner the other day after the last one died from barely using it 2 years and it immediately started sucking itself straight to the ground, no matter what setting you'd put it in. I eventually put some fabric on it to be able to actually suck up dust and crumbs instead of kicking them around because the thing is glued too tight to the ground. A day later my electric grill died after just 5 years of being used. Planned Obsolescence is a pain in the ass.
generally speaking, everything. and the workers take the blame for not having the pride, as with all the problems these relentlessly for-profit companies have caused/worsened.
That's not planned.... You bought the cheapest vaccum and grill but expected them to last forever.
@@Ryuker16 explain apple devices... those are far from the cheapest, they're some of the most expensive...
Printers are the worst imho
@@dennism4508 Stop buying Epson then. I have a Brother printer, it's still going.
As someone working in the glass industry trying to improve and test the strength of different glasses (especially display glasses), I must say that you did a fantastic job of explaining the underlying theoretical concepts of glass strength, chemical toughening and the typical processes during glass fracture. Glass is such an interesting and durable material and the fracture of glasses is such an interesting topic, I love that you were able to so wonderfully and shortly explain it to a broader community.
As someone who also works in the glass industry (Transporting glass in my case) it shocked me that no one was wearing wrist guards (leather or kevlar) while handling large sheets of glass.
Have you ever seen the channel SloMo Guys? They recorded glass shattering in slow motion. It is crazy fast. Almost instantaneous
did you ever try to make some *Prince Rupert* glass thingy, sir ? 🤔
You're telling me we can make simple glasses like this and make them not break? Why the F don't they sell these in stores or for restaurants?
@@Toasticuss I wouldn’t necessarily call it „simple“ to make such glasses. A lot if processing has to be done to make glasses that durable and resistant. Today, with mass production of „cheap glass“, it’s just not sensible from an economical standpoint because the prices for „unbreakable glass“ would be much higher in comparison.
3:44 yep that's definitely some authentic historical footage yes sir
It is. It's AI upscaled, not AI generated. Learn to notice the difference.
We need unbreakable glass. I gave my dad and his new wife a pair of VERY expensive Baccarat wine stem wear glasses. They were pieces of art. Perfectly shaped, amazingly thin and the stem was the thinnest possible. We paid $200 each for them. Months later we visited them and when wine was presented at dinner I asked them to use the Wedding glasses. In an off hand manner she told me that they shattered in the dishwasher. Dishwasher! Unbelievable.
$200 each - HAHAHA.
Glasses that expensive are sold with the assumption that you will be paying someone to clean them for you by hand.
That’s on her. No offense but that’s as stupid as putting a knife in a dishwasher. Common sense isnt as common as it seems
Dude, not a single historical piece of artistic glass or porcelane would last in a dishwasher. There is a line between low quality product and incompetence of a user.
Watching the program, I thought stem glassware would be a great use of this type of glass.
American: Communist glas?! Not in my country!!! _reloads shotgun_
*our* country
*Bullets get deflected by the glass*
@@heidirabenau511 Communist!!
@@heidirabenau511 Communist!!
*Communist:* Here, a glass you‘ll never need to replace, it’s indestructible! *Capitalists:* Bruv make light bulbs worse I ain’t getting paid enough
What a twist that the majority of us were watching this video through super glass.
That's glassy
damn
Yoo, that's a good comment. I wonder if any of the kids of the OGs work for gorilla glass or any of the window companies that make hurricane proof stuff. Also I commented about 40 seconds before he mentioned gorilla glass in the vid. I want it known I put two and two together 😅
My cracked screen begs to differ
Tht they made deliberately 10 thinner to perpetate planned obsolescence. Glass being that thin is irrelevant for overall phone size😂😂😂 If it was 1.5mm thick it would likely never break and phones would last +10yrs😅😅😅
These would have ended the entire movie trope of dropping a glass in surprise.
" Glass is glass, and glass breaks. " - Zack.
Yea, the capitalist pigs at corelle ware make 'shatter resistant plates' that are pretty impressive, but they still break occasionally. Something tells me these glasses break too, since they are similar designs.
"it's too long lasting" something that only is a valid point under consumer capitalism
the glass he is talking about is acrylic, you got scammed, go read some books mate, you are too gullible.
@@SpaceMarine113 acrylic isn't even mentioned in the video what the fuck are you on about?
@@SpaceMarine113 Did you know that books don't get live updates, live revisions, comments or any notices if any of the information inside it gets invalidated? Yeah, forgot about that one huh?
So much worse than the problems of communism, right?
@@UmamiPapi yes. you have no idea what you're talking about. Go back to shilling the bible
Interesting last question. Sometimes it makes me mad how the world is driven by money so badly that customers lack products which would be glorious... 😢
we dont lack glorious products, we lack money to buy them. fern left out the price for a single glass for a reason... Energy shortly after the fall of the wall was not cheap and the process used to make the glass is energy intensive on top of having hughe stratup costs.
That capitalism for you, selling you the worst products at the highest price, and making sure being poor is more expansive than being rich, trapping people in poverty
@@1996Horstfinally someone understands why communism sucks and why we can’t have nice things, because not everyone makes a billion dollars an hour
One of the drawbacks of capitalism for sure
@@ethan1367like the main one
DUDE.... just found your channel and watched 4 video's in a row. YOU ROCK! Thanks for feeding my curiosity and YT addiction :)) PS : due to your genius incorporation of sponsoring you are the first to make me register (at Brilliant). Wishing you all the best!
I love not only your educational documentary but also how you edited your graphics with unique detail and effort.
Our World is stuffed when a product that would save the world millions of dollars is seen as too good. Planned obsolescence is destroying our world. Love your work Fern
That’s capitalism for ya.
If Innovation that serves the only people just exists in communist country’s is our system really th event for us?
@@GurkenbauerTim No, that's greed
E
@@GurkenbauerTim same reason we pay for electricity instead of having it free but a mutli billion dollar industrie wouldnt be anymore...
My grandma from berlin still has one of these! Used it many times, never knew there was such a story behind it, thank you!
Even it was "unbreakable", it wasnt unscratchable. So after some time of using it wasnt clear, transparent.
5:33 "they are zipping along the autobahn" love how you included footage showing volkswagon cars overheated on the side of the road
The Volkswagen was actually the one that zipped past the overheated cars. Probably from some kind of advert for air cooled cars.
What is funny is that, of all the BMW models, he showed the Isetta. Very decadent!
Superfest was never going to sell, just as Chemcor (the chemically strengthened glass Corning developed in the 1960s never gained big sales) until there was a demand for it. Chemcor was further developed into Gorilla Glass by Corning, and is now in pretty much every smartphone, tablet and other screened handheld devices on the market. Superfest was only ahead of its time because Corning didn't try to sell Chemcor glass for drink ware. Chemcor was marketed to the auto industry, prisons and any other place that may have need for "tough" glass. Both Chemcor and Superfest suffered from the same issue, a product that no one was overly interested in, because they didn't serve any purpose at the time. There was plenty of interest in both glasses, but both glasses were far more expensive than standard soda lime glass to the point it was still cheaper to buy several sets of standard glasses or windows than buy a single set of Superfest or Chemcor glasses or windows.
I was using my mother's Corning glassware to measure oil for my car for years until she found out... So I bought my own and I dropped it the other day in the driveway and my heart stopped as I imagined this thing breaking into a million little pieces... But it just bounced off the ground making a cool reverberation sound and was completely fine... Now I realize why my mother is glassware has survived 30 some odd years.... I keep my measuring cup on a shelf precariously in my garage I have a feeling it'll be with me for a long time
Older PYREX was made with borosilicate glass that can withstand greater thermal stress and physical shock. Regular glassware is of the soda lime variety. Modern "pyrex" (spelled in lower case letters now) uses weaker/CHEAPER soda lime glass, and people are discovering that it is nowhere near as durable, to the point of shattering in ovens and using while hot.
You may find a concrete garage floor is hard enough to break it, especially if you have an asphalt driveway, it’s downright bouncy
why the fuck would you use kitchen glassware to measure oil?? does someone have to actually call you an A-hole for you to get that there's nothing to brag about here?
It doesn't look like it, but you did a lot of damage. That causes micro fractures and those will grow over time. I worked in a chemistry lab and brand new Pyrex could be dropped into concrete and it wouldn't break, but the old stuff would randomly break when we set it down a little too hard.
I have Arcoroc glass dinner plates from the 70s. They have survived three boys and they all have been dropped several times. They are just unbreakable.
Actually NUDE Glass (yes it's the name of the company) will start selling unbreakable glassware this year, for example wine glasses. They presented it last year and also this year at different fairs.
I just looked into it and NUDE sells crystalline glass, so it’s not the same thing but it accomplishes the same thing. Unfortunately they only sell wine and cocktail glasses with personally unappealing styling. What’s a man gotta do for some indestructible 70s Soviet chic pint glasses :(
I would also want that pint glass 😢@@salamander405
They are also so expensive that you can buy dozens of normal glasses for the same price.
Now we know not to invest. 😆
€98 for 2 tumblers, ROFL I don't think so, IKEA it is.
I gotta like your insight in the GDR. The way you pointed the problem in the material world instead of the "haha commie bad" is really appreciated. Answering the last question: Almost all. From plastic that has a one use, one life cycle, to the 5 year life cycle cars, we could make things a lot better, or even the life cycle if the plot farms themselves. Capitalism won't end it until it is really over, that meaning, until the extintion of human itself, that is why it must be replaced, as almost any cost of the hardships of the chage would pale in comparasion to continuing the everhungry capital accumulation. I, as a Computers Systems Engineer, would even point the shortened life cycle software, as Flash Player was never natutrally replaced, the end of life caused a crisis in many web pages. Replacement is natural, what is not natural is deeming any piece of software as obsolete by solely its time. It would be no problem with today's production to turn the wheel towards everlasting products, from better ways to preserve wood to improve steel oxidation. The problem is, and will remain being, the nature of the System. But it is no longer an economic problem. It is a problem in all sectors: ecology, econony, politics, social, morality, knowledge, phylosophy, culture... Just to finish. In a report I did for school some time ago, I proved that the simple change/return from plastic to glass in the bottled drinks would solve most of the street polution. And therefore the problem is in the hands of the production, not on the consumer, who only would want to drink the sugar and water, no matter the material bottle.
Necessary reminder that planned obsolescence (or rather, casual disregard for longevity) causes the most of solid pollution, drains a huge percentage of used energy and causes the populace to stay poor all in one move.
Found this channel only like a month ago but always instantly watch there new videos they are just too good
Even the ads are crazy good😂 5:55
Same bro watching this channel for last one month Loving it.
You guys don't watch a ton of KZhead videos.
its good german quality!
@@Sigismund_Vll I really do but sure
The man that got his beer served in a paper cup was actually the minister for glass and ceramics in the DDR
It's a funny detail, and it shows how capricious a planned economy is. One guy wants his beer in a glass, so everybody drop everything and spare no expense to create a glass that suits his taste. 😂😂
@@friendlyfire7861 Tell us more about how little you know about planned economies.
@@kristoffer3000 There are a lot of reasons to leave a sarcastic comment; advancing the conversation isn't one of them. What are you trying to say?
@@friendlyfire7861 I mean, you just spouted off a lot of ignorant shite with no connection to the real world, what am I supposed to do? Pat you on the back?
@@friendlyfire7861 I guess he is trying to say you have no idea what you're talking about...
It's not really planned obsolescence. It's more about expense and practical application. Soda-lime is an inexpensive process, but chemically hardened glass is dramatically more expensive. If bars and restaurants would pay more for durable glass, glass sellers would make it. And they could dial in the hardening properties if they wanted to control planned obsolescence anyway. But think about it from a bar/restaurant perspective: do they really want to use the same glassware for 70 years? Sure there are a few beer glass designs that have stood the test of time, but the most popular for example whisky glass design today came into production in 2001 and only saturated the market in the 2010's. If you're a trendy restaurant, you want glassware and stoneware that is catching and exciting and that emphasizes your brand and experience. Not something soviet and utilitarian. More popular would be cheap glassware that you can throw your branding on, or someone else's branding to get at a discount. And if you're marketing to restaurants and bars directly? Sure, replacing glassware is a significant expense. But it is an ongoing operational expense rather than a fixed capital expense. Restaurants are cash-flow businesses with money coming in daily, they can afford to divert some of that to the expense of replacing glasses as needed. But make a large up-front initial investment in more expensive hardened glass? Not so much. This is another example not of how big business cartels in the West have someone conspired against society to make things worse. It's an example of how too much central-planning in production fails to achieve appropriate sensitivity to the actual needs of the participants in the market. GDR bureaucrats decided they needed unbreakable glassware and they used their fallible human reasoning to convince themselves it was a good idea. But when you have intellectual humility and the willingness to go past your biases and look at it more critically, you can see that it actually doesn't really solve a genuine problem in a viable way.
dude, nine years of waiting time for a "trabbi" is quite an understatement, usually, you could almost double that...
remember to hydrate
I'm gay too buddy
Love from Germany
😮
@@fatal_d1are you a Nazi?
Breath Air That's even more important
maybe they should have gone directly with the product to the customers instead of the suppliers. buyer and supplier have different interests it really broke my heart when you mentioned how much better off everyone would be if the interest wasn't just money
Most basic form of capitalism
the unbreakable drinking glass will probably cost 50 dollars a piece or something, when you could buy breakable drinking glass with 10 cents 12pack, because of settled industry. would probably have to make a law to have unbreakable glasses, so industry would have to make them. "Bormioli Rocco Rock Bar Glass Tumbler Set of 6. 9 ounce capacity. $11.99. Tempered glass resists thermal shock and chipping. Dishwasher safe for easy cleaning. " seems i was wrong, even now break resistant glass costs just 2 dollars a piece. THOUGH break resistant is not the same as unbreakable glass.
@@Redmanticore Also this glass is cheaper to make than tempered glass, since it's literally just making a normal soda lime glass cup, heating it up and dumping it into a potassium-nitrate solution
Now you can with online sales platforms, back then it’s much more difficult to establish a sales network
The mistake they did was going for glasses in place of glass bottles.
so it failed basically because of capitalism
This hardly would be the problem. Most probably were things like production costs or costs for licensing the product.
@@frankstrawnation No, it was capitalism.
@@Techno_Idioto Sounds legit, weeb communists are always right.
@@Techno_Idioto Like your name says idioto.
A text book example how the free market and capitalism don't always evolve good products for the consumers.
Considering the amount of micro plastics that are polluting our environment, these glasses could be a very important solution.
What are you talking about? Plankton and coral love to grow on particles of plastic. Plastic is the ideal inert solid, which is why we wrap all of our food in it.
Yeah I think it'd be awesome to make plastics obsolete. Replace what can be replaced with ultra glass.
@@ILovePancakes24 we need to unironicly return to tradition when it comes to materials.
No. This kind of glass can only replace clear hard plastic, which is usually used to make reusable products anyway. The problem isn't plastic; it's plastic disposal. Unbreakable glass is very definitely not a solution to the plastic problem.
@@Syuvinya plastic drinkware is toxic and leeches chemicals into foods. Glassware is safe.
Like many things, there's more to the story of the lightbulb cartel than people think when they first hear about it. The centennial bulb in that one firehouse is an excellent example of the problem too. If you ever get the chance to see it, keep in mind that it's a 60 watt bulb. It draws 60 watts, but only puts out as much light as a normal 4 watt bulb. Why? Making an incandescent bulb that lasts a century isn't actually difficult, that's why people have known how for so long. Just make the filament thicker. Not only does that make the filament more durable, but it makes the filament stay cooler because there's less resistance, and that also makes it last longer. But that's a problem because being hot is how incandescent bulbs make light. So you've made a longer-lasting bulb, sure, but now you need twice as many of them to light the same room. Which means you need twice as much electricity to power them. Let's say you live somewhere that has electricty at 20c/kwh. Let's also say you have two bulbs to choose from, a 200w bulb that lasts 1000 hours, or a 400w bulb that lasts _forever._ Both bulbs make the same amount of light, both bulbs cost $5 to purchase. The 200w bulb that lasts 1000 hours will use 0.2 x 1000 = 200 kwh over that thousand hours. At 20c/kwh, that's $40 worth of electricity. Add the $5 cost of the bulb, and you're paying $45 per thousand hours of light. The 400w bulb will use 400kwh per thousand hours of runtime, costing $80 in electricity. Even if we _don't_ include the cost of the bulb, you're still spending $80 per thousand hours of light. The bulb that lasts forever costs _more,_ even if you don't pay more for it. That's what was happening, lightbulb makers were advertising bulbs that lasted longer and longer, and they _did_ last longer, but people's electricity bills were going up and they were complaining to the power companies. "I haven't changed anything and my electricity bill doubled! What the hell!?" It was also putting a strain on the electrical grid of the time, which was costing the electrical utilities more money in maintenance. So the electricity utilities told the lightbulb makers to _Knock that off!_ Turns out, you need electricity to power lightbulb factories, so they listened. They set the 1000 hour limit, and switched to competing on price, light quality, decorative bulb shapes, etc... Planned obsolescence is a terrible thing, and it's all too common in this day and age, but the 1000 hour limit of the incandescent lightbulb just isn't a good example of it.
This comment was great until you got to planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence, for all intents and purposes, does not exist in practice. Tons of things today are designed to be cheap, because people prefer cheaper products - they voted with their wallets and showed they are not willing to pay more for quality. So the result is products designed down to a price. They’re not designed to break soon, they’re designed to be cheap. That’s not the same thing.
Why would they set a lifespan limit in order to keep power usage manageable, as opposed to…a power usage limit? I understand that both attributes are linked through the aspect of filament thinness, but that precludes any innovation which sidesteps this limitation. It’s like if Intel decided that to improve laptop battery life, from now on, all laptops must weigh at least 4.5kg since more weight = more battery, ignoring the possibility of better battery tech, more efficient processors etc allowing for better endurance without compromising weight.
@@tookitogodid you watch the video? Products that were considerably more durable for the same price as their fragile competitors sold worse because they lasted longer, thus demand quickly shrunk, while the sustain in demand from peoples products breaking all the time led to the fragile products outcompeting the quality products. And this never even benefits the consumer, just look at disposable razors. While they have a lower upfront cost, comparing their sustained fees to other shaving types like safety or cartridge razors shows that they're by far the most expensive option, for a worse experience In a market economy you have winners and losers, and the winners are always the ones with the most devious, underhanded tactics
@@tookitogo There's stuff that's clearly designed to break after some time. I've seen some practices in smartphones, laptops of stuff that didn't make sense to me. Either these engineers were dumb, or it was done like that on purpose. Planned obsolescence it's a think and it's becoming even more.
I was about to write a similar comment. If anyone wants a lengthy (but very good and interesting) explanation, I can highly recommend watching "Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated" by Technology Connections.
GREAT video, an insight into a lot of topics, from history, to chemistry, to economics, to manunfacturing... About planned obsolescence for a moment - it's not as simple as it seems. One thing often overlooked is that it can be good - as with lightbulbs. The cartel did make it so you couldn't make longer lasting lightbulbs... But the longer lasting ones were dimmer and more expensive IIRC. Planned obsolescence is also about cost cutting. You could have a thing that won't break, but it would be expensive, use more material (and thus heavier), would be less efficient. To have it be efficient and light, it would be MUCH more expensive. It's a trade off. Things oftentimes aren't designed to break after designed shelf-life is up. Things are designed to be durable enough to last a typical usage period. A car is usually used for 10-15 years, and thus the parts are usually made to last that amount of time assuming a specified use and maintenance. Overengineering something is just wasteful.
Congratulations! You got the point of it! Planned obsolescence is also about cost cutting, the market incentivises that: the lower the production cost the higher the return in investment. There's more to it I'll get into shortly but you're right about that! About the lightbulbs... Sure, shorter lifespan lightbulbs might've been better light-output wise... 100 years ago. It might've been a solution to a nuisance to just limit the lifespan, though you could also innovate! That of course happened, though simply limiting the lifespan disincentivised that. "We have a solution, why bother making it better?". Besides, while they might've been more expensive, they still would've done their job well enough and the added expense would be worth it over time, as you'd have to replace the quickly breaking lamp a lot more than an everlasting one. Always think long-term, not short-term! Besides, your analogy with cars is lacking context. A car, as in one specific car, is usually used 10-15 years BECAUSE of planned obsolescence. It can't be used for more, it would just not be worth it to repair the constantly breaking parts. People normally use cars, as in the mode of transport, for far longer than that! Logically, if you've used your car to commute to work for the last couple of years because it's the most comfortable way, would you want to change your ways? Of course not! You'll keep using the car to commute, be it a different one or the "somehow" still functioning oldie from the 90s. This applies to basically everything, from microwaves (there's a comment in here about that) to glassware (the entire point of this video). You use a product for as long as it's useful to you, if the product breaks while it's still useful to you of course you're gonna buy it again or tediously look for alternatives. In short, the "typical usage period" is made up, it's basically the lifespan of a product before it breaks. Planned obsolescence is almost always used for profit. This might be a bold claim to hear, but it is actually what it is mainly for. You've seen the video, right? The quote from the Coca-Cola salesperson was "we earn money off our glasses" and by the other glass dealers "why should we saw off the branch we're sitting on?". That's not what a person caring about the quality of a product would say, not even one caring about a "typical usage period" of a product. Businesses stay in business because they can continue selling their product on the market, mainly through recurring customers. If they suddenly sell a product that a customer can use for a lifetime, then there would be practically no recurring customers. If then everyone owns their product, because the only way to keep being on the market this way is to reach more people than before, no-one would buy from the company and they'd go bankrupt. This is an issue many big tech companies are facing and have been for a while, it is called "market saturation". It's the natural end result of selling a product of higher quality on a market driven by infinite growth. It's just not practical to produce something of good quality, else you risk market saturation and a loss of profit. "Things oftentimes aren't designed to break after designed shelf-life is up" is thus only technically right for certain products. And on top of that, even those products aren't always designed to break after the shelf life but the breakage often results by constant reduction in production cost. Really, most products nowadays are designed specifically to last "long enough", that long enough being a few years at best and a few weeks at worst. It depends on the type of product and the perceived value of it. If the quality or the user experience was valued over profit, we simply wouldn't have things like fast fashion, insurances for products outside of the manufacturer's "warranty", hell we wouldn't have this much waste production or even carbon emissions. Every single product requires emissions, if one product lasts for less time than it could it's a waste. You hint at companies wanting the quality of the product to be good for the typical usage period, but both the typical usage period and the company wanting good are a myth. Companies need to survive in capitalism and planned obsolescence is a great way of doing exactly that. Greed is the driving factor, the higher your profits the better your chance of survival. If you wouldn't have to grow infinitely in a finite world, if you wouldn't have to be greedy to survive, that'd rid planned obsolescence, that'd rid the trade-off between quality and maximum possible profit. Overengineering something is not wasteful if it prevents much more waste in the long run.
@@balistowo 'generating landfill with extra steps'
I never could have guessed that this video would end with Corning Gorilla glass.
"Glass is glass and glass breaks" - JerryRigEverything
How does this have any relation to this video
"Superfest is superfest and superfest is firm" - JürgenRigEverything
@@xmorose Because even that hardened glass still breaks if you hit it the right way. Metal won't, but it's unfortunately not transparent.
@@Alias_AnybodyWhat about transparent aluminium?
‘arrakis is arrakis, and the desert takes the weak’
Small correction for the information in the video at 13:05 There is a trade-of in the making of old tungsten filament light blubs Basically you can make a dimm bulb that lasts long or a bright bulb that needs charging often Making a bulb costs cents so consumers and manufacturers chose brightness over longevity Planed obsolescence is a thing that I also hate but this is not necessary the case here But now we are blessed with LEDs We can thank for that the person that invented the blue LED: there is a video about that Without him there would be no white light from LEDs
Yeah there's a lot of pretty crucial information left out in this video. Of course with the light bulbs, but the reason Superfest glasses weren't widely adopted isn't purely due to planned obsolescence. It's because there were already international glass makers worldwide that made higher quality products at a less costly price. CorningWare, Pyrex, and Duralex already had very durable glass products that they could manufacture at a lower price, and therefore sell at a lower price. Superfest glasses were much costlier to produce in comparison, and therefore would have had to be sold at a much higher price to make a profit. Most consumers don't want to pay $18 for a glass when they could instead pay $8 and get one almost as durable. The only cases I could see Superfest glasses catching on would be in higher end bars and wineries where thinner glasses are more common, so it would make sense for those business owners to invest in more durable glasses that look the same. But that's also a very small and specific market to sell to, unlike the large household items market that Superfest went after instead.
We are blessed with LEDs that can last thousands of hours while still being brighter than the old bulbs. Thousands of hours is too good, so Philips deliberately sells dimmer LEDs with circuits that run them at overvoltage, thus achieving the same level of light but burning them out faster and making each slightly cheaper to produce. Notice a pattern here?
As we understand it, a 1000h lifespan indeed has advantages. However, internal comments of the cartel suggested a profit motive for the reduced lifespan (spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy), this is also supported by findings of a US court: law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/82/753/1755675/
but cosumers didnt choose, its the manufacturers that made the choice, thats why the cartel existet in the first place, to make sure that nobody else is making the long lasting bulbs. If the consumers decided that they wanted the brighter bulbs then there wouldnt be any need for the cartel. Like yes there is a benifit and a pretty big one at that but we dont actually know what the people back then would have chosen, i think its very likely for them to choose the brighter one but i can see uses for the longer lasting one as well that people could have chosen, like for example hallways or places were you let the light on for a long time.
@@fern-tv The lightbulb conspiracy theory has been debunked time and time again. Internal comments "suggesting" something doesn't mean anything. The linked article from IEEE somewhat misses the point in that the 1000 hours was a compromise between lifespan and brightness. Longer lasting lightbulbs were possible, but those lightbulbs would flicker more and be less susceptible to voltage fluctutations which were common at that time. Oh and this cartel lasted for about five years... big whoop. Of course business interests played a vital role. The linked case United States v. General Electric Co. say nothing about reducing lifespans of lightbulbs, it just - correctly - calls out the fact that there was a monopoly with an iron grip at all.
The integration for that Shopify ad was smooth af. Had no idea I was watching an ad lol
Irony: Apple relying on a company that rejects planned obsolescence.
Yes, it’s contradictory,but if you look closer it kind of makes sense. If you want to sell a smartphone the screen has to be resilient because it is product you use everyday. Despite Apple being a profit orientated cooperation , they need the product to last a couple of years and not break immediately. If the glass would crack when the Smartphone falls out of your pocket, it wouldn’t be successful.They need it to last for a couple of years before eventually it doesn’t work anymore. They need the consumers trust because otherwise they would realise that Apple is manipulating the product. Planned obsolescence should appear to be inevitable ,so that the cooperation is still making huge profits . In the case of Coca Cola they need to sell as many bottles, which means that they have to be disposable . You cannot refill, but have to buy another coke.Although I understand that you resent the sheer amount of greed from this big cooperations.
SuperFirm SuperFern
you mean at 0:29 ??? lol
noi, it's superfeschd.
It's a play in words for the quality of the channel@@starcrawler77
@@starcrawler77 ???
@@starcrawler77 Noi, des ischd subrfeschd
And still, there is a crack in my "Gorilla Glass" smartphone screen 😤
That's because it may be 15x stronger, but your phone screen is also 15x thinner than the wall of a drinking glass, so it'll still break under stress like being dropped multiple times. It just won't break randomly in your pocket when you sit down the way regular glass would have.
Glass is glass, And glass breaks.
Are you stupid..?
Monkey glass
I mean if they went for a thicker iPhone with not so thin glass, it may last TOO long. so there's that too.
Wow REALLY AWESOME PIECE! Reminds me of how toasters and most counter top cooking devices are purposely made w/ cheap heating coils so they break in under 2 years . Looove glass so much for eating & drinking - gonna see if I can buy some of this vintage superglass online :)!
My parents have a restaurant in Saxony (East Germany), I was born in 2002 and grew up with the glasses. I have known them all my life and I believe that these glasses will live longer than me😀 Thanks for this video!
Light bulbs with thinner filaments not just brake earlier, they're also more energy efficient. With modern LEDs it's usually different. There are for example the Dubai Lamps which are way more efficient and also last longer. But most manufacturers sell the cheaper to produce less efficient lamps which don't last that long.
Thats nonsense. Watts are watts regardless of the filament is thick or thin. If by "efficient" you mean light at the expense of consumption by self destruction, that is not efficient.
@@onradioactivewaves I'm no expert, but when talking about filament light bulbs, I'm pretty sure the idea of using as small a filament as possible (one that breaks faster) is in fact a matter of getting more efficiency. The thicker the filament the more energy needs to be put through it to produce the same amount of light. Or that is how I remember it at least
@@TheBaitos I'm not an expert either, but have spent a decent amount of time testing lighting professionally ( mostly on the control side). Unless you are considering using a filament so large that the energy does not become visible light due to not being heated enough, it's a rather simple problem. Resistors are 100% efficient at producing heat, and that heat radiates as blackbody radiation. Brighter filaments also outgas more and are more likely to burn out sooner, whereas a larger filament will have more of a chance for those particles to redeposit. Then you also have to remanufacture the light bulb. From a big picture perspective I'm leaning towards larger filament being better and that the efficiency is basically the same ( remember you can somewhat control the resistance as well, there are a lot of variables at play).
Technology Connections I hear?
@@onradioactivewaveswatch the Technology Connections video on the Phoebus cartel. In an incandescent bulb, the best way to extend the life of the bulb is to lower the operating temperature of the filament to reduce stress on it and on the vacuum seal of the bulb. This requires a longer filament and more watts to produce the same light output. Light bulb engineers even worked out a formula that equates filament length, light output, and power consumption
This must be what nuka cola bottles are made out of in fallout
regarding the lightbulb cartels story the planned obsolescence of 1000 hours was not created with the purpose of selling more lightbulbs. It was done because shorter life bulbs work at a higher temperature which wears them out faster which has the advantages of a whiter brighter light and better efficiency. Older lights which used carbon filaments vs the thin tungsten used in later ones could last much longer but at the expense of a dimmer orange light that consumed a lot more power. Power companies also backed the lightbulb manufacturers as a more efficient lightbulb meant they could sell to more homes with the same amount of power generation capacity.
Yes. The planned obsolescence was part of it, but that can't last forever. LEDs that last forever are in a similar arc, I think. The first ones were super expensive and last forever. But do you really want that? The newer ones put out better light. You'd probably eventually throw out the old ones even if they still work. However, their longer life is still a selling point and even while that goes down, it is probably just coming into balance with the fact that you don't want every item you buy to be a lifetime purchase. And that 100 year old lightbulb barely puts out any light, and it's pretty red. Not good for a normal bulb.
@@friendlyfire7861 nah, led stuff is bullsh**. Basically instead of underdriving more led chips they underdrive less led chips. this is less in materials, to the order of like 20 cents, but runs the chips significantly hotter which makes them burn out in 3 years instead of 15. Dubai got special low power ones with extra filaments because they saw this.
Great video! I'm from the GDR, and I recall the fantastic Superfest glass. Could you create a video featuring the NARVA lightbulb from GDR? It's renowned for its longevity, a true lightbulb for eternity.
Ngl, the weird AI upscaling sheen on the black and white footage is really distracting, especially where it tries to incorrectly make out small low-res details. Is that how the Pathé footage looked originally?
No it's definitely AI-upscaling. Kind of a shame to be using AI when it's clearly not working
Noted, we will tweak that in future videos
Came here to comment this^
distracting? I don’t even know what you are referring to! I would prefer an upscaled video of the old times than not.
@@Tortee2 I'm referring to the fact the archival footage looks like it's been run through a stylistic oil-paint filter. When the detail is that low originally, there's no point running it through an upscaler cos it comes out looking like colour-blocky mush
But let’s just keep this in theory… if they made the best product of glass to ever exist, their business might not last for a thousand years, but if the whole world buys and owns their products eventually, they would have made enough money to live for a thousand years😂
Too bad they're lives are shorter than 100 years and estate tax exits then
It's not actually unbreakable. Sales will slow down a lot, but glass will still need replacing every now and then
That’s the concept manufacturing doesn’t get exactly.
Maybe two weeks after release is a bit too late for this comment, but Technology Connections made a great video about the durability of lightbulbs and why the agreement to limit their lifespan was actually a pretty consumer friendly idea. The problem with those "infinite bulbs" is that they achieve their lifespan by being comparatively dim. By agreeing to limit their products lifespan these companies on one hand secured their existence in the future, but on the other hand also ensured that customers wouldn't just buy continuously dimmer bulbs with the premise of a seemingly infinite lifespan.
I've heard of and purchased various versions of 'tough' glass, though I had no idea of its roots. In learning of polymers this year, the transparent plastics are mostly amorphous types, and I suspect glass is in the same camp. If glass were ordered crystalline, they wouldn't be transparent (I assume). What was really interesting is that this was essentially nitriding for glass as you would do to certain tool steels for the same reason. Next time I get my blast furnace going, I have some experiments to run!
And I thought the reason why we dont have it these days is something like lead. No, it was just a bad sales person and planned obsolescence. He should have went directly to bars and restaurants, to the local fetes and their organizers and to the private person hat home.
There might have been some reason why East Germany couldn't manufacture and export the glasses. Otherwise yeah, consumers would have loved to have those and the East Germans would have made a lot of money selling a set to everyone.
Never would've i thought I'll watch a 15 minute video on a such mundane object like glass in one go like it's nothing. These videos are extremely captivating, keep the good work !
Wow! besides the Great story and a fantastic narration, it's clear that you have a gift of explaining complex stuff really understandable. bro, HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR GRAPHICS?
Even replacement parts are hit and miss nowadays because it's obvious it was designed to have shorter lifespans. I end up buying several sets of the same replacement parts for critical equipment because the original 60's versions that lasted until the early 00's finally broke, and the replacement parts barely last a year.
So in a society where profit margin is not a concern products are possible that are much more durable? crazy.
Basically now they try this idea but from a different angle in Netherlands, you can look up service or circular economy, the idea is to pay for services, not products (light, transportation, food storage) in this case you pay a subscription and the company has an incentive to create the most efficient and durable products, because it comes out of their pocket, they pay for electricity and products, and charge a consumer for services, they already do this at Rolls Royce jet engines, companies pay not for engines, but flight hours
I work in a company wich arised from a GDR company. Most things were manufactured in a way to last long or to be easily repaired. Yes it was due to shortages but we still could learn much from this spirit considering sustainability. Theres a german saying "Not macht erfinderisch" Necessity is the mother of invention.
@@imakro69 Idk if I like that. If I buy something I want to be able to do with it what I want. If I habe to pay a subscription for everything I use, that ongoing expense would get very large, very quick. Even 1€ per Item can cut into Income if you use hundreds of Items a day...
Steady on comrade. So when products last 100 years then where do the jobs come from to produce new ones now? And why would anyone innovate when no-one will buy their better product because the existing ones still work fine? This is why socialist and communist societies stagnate. Do any of you millenial morons understand basic economics?
And yet the capitalist West spent the entire Cold War having superior… everything. crazy.
Also this story reminds me of the lesser known Roman myth of flexible glas, that did not break and only deformed. The inventor was executed since it risked gold and silver as the currency of rome and instead would use that glas / risk glas production of rome. Weird story, thought it fit into this discussion
wow you're amazing telling stories, the ending is unbelievably amazing
I have some glass plates my mother handed down to me that’s been with our family since I was a baby. I remember one day she took a plate and threw it down into the ground really hard to prove to us they wouldn’t break. It didn’t. It just bounced and reverberated. I still have the whole set to this day. Amazes me this material isn’t used more regularly.
WOW. Coming from your two german channels over to this one, I really have to admit this video is amazing. Nearly accent-free english mixed with that astonishing video quality is just staggering. Allthough I knew about the Superfest glass and the wold-destroying concept of planned obsolescence it was still entertaining and informative. Thank you for this great video and the even better message in the end. Keep up the great work :)
The sales rep story reminds me way too much of the myth people keep repeating about the space pen: "the US spent billions on designing a zero-G pen while the clever soviets just used a pencil!!!11" while in reality there were _very_ good reasons not to use a pencil in a space craft.
One obvious reason is fire+spacecraft is a bad idea. Everything needs to be as flame retardant as possible. Wood and Graphite are flammable in our normal 21% oxygen atmosphere. Imagine how bad it is in 100% oxygen. Also splinters and dust would be a nightmare in Zero-G
And as you likely know, it's not true: the Soviets used pens too.
@@stephenbrain3620It is true. Both sides were using pencils until at least 1967 because the space pen wasn't invented until 1965, and it was only after a lot of testing that the NASA ordered a batch. The Soviets kept using pencils till at least 1969.
The light bulb planned obsolescence is kind of a myth as well. Technology Connections has a great video on it, but the fact of the matter is that longer-lived incandescent bulbs are more expensive to produce and use more energy to produce the same amount of light. The infamous Phoebus Cartel actually calculated their mandatory maximum bulb life to balance longevity with energy efficiency, and as it turns out, the decreased efficiency of long life bulbs means the customer ends up spending more money over the life of the bulb than it would've cost to replace it.
@@Sammie1053 The life of an incandescent bulb is related to the 13th power of the applied voltage divided by the design voltage. So a slight amount too much voltage will burn out a lamp very quickly, while slightly less will make it a little dimmer, but last a whole lot longer. This has been known for ages, and as a result, most industrial-use and commercial-use incandescent lamps from the 1940s through the 1990s were rated for 130V, rather than 120V consumer lamps are rated for. That little change has a quite small effect on light output, but causes the lamps to last 2.8 times as long as identical 120V lamps.
That was awesome. I didn't expect to watch a 14 minute video on unbreakable glasses but it was just so interesting and well presented.
The good news is: The patent on Superfest has expired. Anyone who wants can try it again.
In bahrain there was a shop that tried to sell me unbreakable glass cups… lady threw the cup at the ground and it bounced as a demo… I had a damn panic attack
7:20 I have never had "glass" explained to me in such a simple and understandable way, that, honestly, I understand glass so much more because of that explanation, so thank you for that.
The lightbulbs are a bad example for what you try to show there. There actually ARE lightbulbs lasting very very long, but they are either very dim or need way more power for the same brightness. Aside from that, my mom still has superfest glassware. It just won't break even though she tries hard! 😉
Excellent video. I remember those glasses, they were sold in former Yugoslavia, were very cheap, light, thin and resilient. Unfortunately the truth is that business don't want products that last too much. And It is how today's economy functions. Thank you for reminding us about this amazing product
Capitalist “innovation” is primarily if not entirely concerned with ensuring consumers keep consuming
E
??? no shit that’s how money works
@@amogussus6593No shit that's how money works after capitalism.
Yeah. By making products people want. This isn't a bad thing.
So capitalism is capitalist
Planned obsolescence is one of the biggest things holding our species as a whole back
capitalism*
yes, also it's polluting/destroying the environment completely unnecessarily 😢
It's completely fake. The lightbulb cartel only lasted a few years and wasn't even very effective.
@@tintin323🤡
@@tintin323how original here’s a sticker 🇨🇳
Wow! I'd never heard of SuperFest before! Obviously the process must be some amount more expensive than normal glass production, but there has to be a market for it - I can imagine some craft beer manufacturer being interested in paper-thin bottles that are just as strong as normal ones, as a way to stand out in the market.
Well done!!!. Sehr informativer Artikel mit nahezu perfekter Dramaturgie!
13:15 This is because they didn’t come up with a magical bulb that lasts forever, there’s a direct relationship between the brightness of the bulb and how long it will last. The issue was some manufacturers were selling and advertising bulbs with extreme lifetimes, but they were unusably dim.
Unusable -> unusably
NO it was THE CAPITALISTS
Get a 277V 200-300 Watt light bulb to run at 120V and you will essentially have a lighting that lasts a lifetime. Its not such a direct relationship from brightness to longevity, theres other factors in the middle there, like filament size.
@@therpope It WAS and it IS capitalism. Capitalism itself is not at fault, but humans just can't stop when they have enough. Some are just greedy, but then even the most modest person does not want to live in poverty as a senior, so people save it for then or for their kids... So yeah, even today lightbulbs are not designed to last as long as possible.
Commercial lamps that companies would actually buy were rated for 130V. Consumer lamps were rated for 120V. The difference in light output and power consumed was minimal, and without two different lamps right beside each other, absolutely nobody noticed. But the 130V lamps lasted 2.8 times longer than identical 120V lamps.
Funfact: in the DDR (GDR) they build extreme high quality tools and unbreakable kitchen divices. Even if they break, they repair things instead of throwing them away. Not everything was bad in the DDR.
yeah, they also invented the superFon 50 years before the iPhone, but nobody was allowed to get one
@@AtomicAndi i don't think so.
But it pretty bad and still fell
Here in Finland I still use tools that were made in both the DDR and BRD(Also SU). I prefer BRD. In general quality products in the past were made to last at least as far as the less advanced material and manufacturing technology allowed. Nowadays most stuff marketed as quality is synonymous with fancy instead of durable.
@@davisdelp8131 It was objectively not bad, the standard of living fell drastically when East and West were reunited.
This is THE example I always use when people say that capitalism and consumerism are good. They are not, we spent thousands of years perfecting our crafts just for some corpo suits to throw it all out of the window with their planned obsolescence. I still hope one day people will see that stuff like this is not politics, it's just corporations abusing consumers.
You just don't know my mom. She broke plenty of hardened, nearly unbrekeable glasses over her lifetime, and the process, of course, is still going.
Look up the movie "The Man in the White Suit", with Alec Guinnes. It's about a inventor who makes a new fabric that is tearproof and will never get dirty. First all the people are amazed by it till they realize all the downsides. The manufacterer will sell it only once to a customer because it will never break. The cleaning industry will go under because all clothes made from it will never get dirty. Ect. I never realized that it realy happend. Not with clothes but with glas. Thank you fern.
It kind of happened with nylon. The production of it caused great concern among workers and the companies subsequently lowered the reliability of nylon products to shorten the products lifes.
@@robertschmitz3788 yes, think stockings. early products were be so good mothers would pass them down to daughters.
pretty much every product and appliance you own has been engineered to fail or has been made in such a way it's hard if not impossible to fix without further damaging it.
oh it also happened with clothes. the material in the movie is a reference to nylon. Manufacturers of tights were in quite a predicament when their new product, the nylon tights because they had put an extremely cheap product on the market that lasted a very long time so they started to build manufacturing defects into their product to not go bust.
it happens with almost every modern product, they design it in such a way that it will break down after a certain duration of time, it'll be too hard or too costly to fix yourself and you'll have to buy a new one, it's horrible
The video quality and content is so amazing. Found your channel a couple of months back and now I eagerly wait for your videos to drop. Keep bringing such great content.
Really? This was the first video I saw of this channel and I'm completely disappointed. All they did was summarize a few articles on that topic and add some fancy graphics. They didn't do any research, didn't try to find answers for the questions that weren't answered by the articles they summarized. From a channel of this size I expect in depth research. Find stuff that isn't already public knowledge (if I can find everything mentioned in this video on page 1 of Google then this channel failed). They did the bare minimum to make a video. And that as a channel with 1 million subscribers.
after that video I'll definitelly look for some superfest glass and buy it. Like in every household, I've got troubles with brekable glass, plates etc. If I'll manage to find something, at least one of the problems will not be my problem anymore. Never heard of it until this very day, but it's a discovery that makes my life a bit easier (hate cleaning broken glass, especially with small kids in home)
Mr fern, your videos are extremely well made, hard to believe how good they are!
That last part with Apple is hilarious considering the stupid VR headset uses the most shatterable glass on the front-face -- the most likely place you'll put down the headset; I've seen the teardowns and I was just laughing my ass off.
2:00 Ich bin schockiert, ein video welches die materiellen Bedingungen der DDR neutral und faktenbasiert darstellt und nicht einfach ideologisch schlecht redet.
Die Möglichkeit hatte ich bereits an den Nagel gehängt.
Warum schockiert? So macht man das doch.
@@nordlicht1881 ne eben nicht. 99% der fälle wird die ddr so behandelt: ddr Wirtschaft schlecht, weil Sozialismus >:(((. BRD Wirtschaft gut, weil Märkte :)))
one of my drinking glasses broke from tipping over on the desk, it didn't even fall any height...
lmfao
When the emperor Tiberius was visited by an alchemist claiming to have created unbreakable glass, he asked him "Are you the only who knows of this invention?". "Yes." said the alchemist before being executed, for all glassworker livelihoods were at stake.
13:08 well there's a little more to that. You can watch the video about that topic from Technology Connections. It's called "Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated". TLDR: It was cheaper for the consumer and more profitable for the manufacturer because these lightbulbs used less energy for the same amount of light. So it was cheaper to buy a new one every few years than to pay for the extra power consumption.
Yeah this kinda made me question the factuality of the whole video.
Well they still absolutely did it for the profit, I can guarantee you it costing less for the consumers didn't factor into it at all
@@jboudny The glass shatters into tiny splinters which are an absolute health hazard for a restaurant (I believe. I've never actually seen the aftermath of specifically superfest glasses shattering). It's also FAR more expensive, and far harder to make designs in. It's also very difficult to recycle, contrasted with normal glass which is actually extremely easy to recycle. Other than the whole planned obsolescence part, the video is correct to my knowledge.
@@Dell-ol6hb if they didnt factor in cost to consumers then why didnt they jack up prices? they were a cartel after all like OPEC they shouldve been manipulating prices like them as well
A simple counterpoint to 'it was cheaper' is the fact that the Phoebus Cartel issued fines to members if they made bulbs that lasted longer regardless of cost and efficiency.
technology connections did a video on the everlasting lightbulb thing - essentially brightness and lifespan are negatively correlated in incandescents, so if you want to see then you have to put up with the 1000 hours limit
I stopped using incandescent lighting 15 years ago.
@@thorr18BEM Or did you just stop buying new incandescent bulbs 15 years ago??? I bet most people still have a number of hard to kill bulbs hiding in their homes, such as oven lights...
@@davidhollenshead4892 I did not swap the internal oven light. You caught me. I did manage to get everything else eventually. I did swap those in the range hood and also the bottom of the microwave which acts as a range hood. All other difficult ones were also swapped for LED, such as various weird sized tube lights. Oven heat would destroy an LED. It’s a tiny specialty exception which is almost always off.
If you buy a decent incandescent bulb rated for the amount of heat your oven puts out, they will never burn out through normal usage. Oven bulbs just don't burn out. They're very energy efficient when the oven is on as well. Not so much when it's off. The heat from the oven does a lot of the work for them.
@@TheGrinningViking and the waste heat from bulbs is terrible to put into an air conditioned room but not wasteful at all to put into an oven you are already intentionally heating.
The thing that made west Germany advance more quickly than the east is the west had the USA propping up the industry while the soviet union was tasked with rebuilding the east on top of rebuilding themselves
Also the very difference in the systems: while the west is predicated on growth and profits no matter the cost, the east tried a new model working towards and for the workers. It wasn't perfect sure, far from it, but the advancements in workers rights and equality cannot be ignored
@d-man422 very true
Sounds like a cop out
@@TheWizardGamez k
100% this! The US had an industry that wasnt even touched by the war. In comparison the USSR was totaly devastated after the fascist invasion.
I wish I could buy some. I had to stop using glass because of a fall risk, but hate the idea of plastic leeching into my drink. In general, I'm a proponent of "buy it for life" type stuff, and have bought several things with that in mind, such as robust furniture and excellent knives.
Really interesting story. I heard that after the wall went down, they actually tried to find a buyer for the company, and thus stil kept the company running for years, sort of. If I recall right, the glass mixture they used had to be kept molten at all costs before it was brought into its final shape and then being tampered. So they had that company having large containers filled with that hot molten glass mixture for years, because they could not let it get hard under any circumstances, otherwise it would be unuseable forever. At least that is how I recall that article I read.
It may have been more about the oven linings than about the glass, as those would likely cost more to rebuild than to just make up a new batch of glass.
“Tady přestává veškerá legrace” - Pelíšky
Google translate “This is where all the fun stops” -Beds
@@Bluepizza1684 idk if you are just joking, but.. this is a reference to a czech movie called "Pelíšky", where this exact glass appears.
@@benzoylmethylekgonin3995 I’m just saying what Google translate turned it into when using the mobile KZhead “translate to English” feature
@@benzoylmethylekgonin3995 No the translate feature of KZhead also gave me that as the translation.
A skláří nebudou mít co žrát
Definitely a well made and interesting video. The only thing I would criticise is that I am not sure if this is the whole picture, or if things have been left out. (For any reason) E.g.: Yes, they limited the life of a light bulb. But in the end they failed because it was forbidden to do so. At least that is how I know the story. But I absolutely agree that the concept exists in a huge amount of our daily products. And that is really sad :-/ However this is a great video :-)
That might be the most flawless ad transition ive ever seen lmao Take my _like..._ 😂