00:00What would you say to join me for a little journey in the past?
00:03There is still a place in my machine to move the time.
00:06First stop, London, at the beginning of the 1900s.
00:10If you look closely, you will see that this city already had an electric light light.
00:16Before that, people would light their ruse through a torch or a petrol lamp.
00:21However, these things that you see inside the lampadaires
00:25are not the modern lamps that we serve today.
00:27At this time, public light light didn't even use an ampoule,
00:31even though they were already invented.
00:34It's because they were not as effective at the time,
00:37they could not produce enough light to clear the dark streets of the city.
00:42They could be convenient to the interior light, of course,
00:45but for a public use, the lamps to carbon arc remained a better choice.
00:50Here I would like to introduce you, Thomas Edison.
00:53He is mainly credited for the invention of the modern electric lamp.
00:58He will explain how most of these lights work works.
01:02All the electric light sources of the time
01:05rely on a simple and basic principle.
01:08The electricity had to pass through a material.
01:11This material had to be resistant and durable,
01:14and it was supposed to shine when it was connected to a source of food.
01:18The first invention of this type was called the lamp to arc.
01:22In this device, the material used for lighting was the carbon.
01:26And since it was charged electrically, it started to vaporize.
01:30This process produced a very light light.
01:33The man behind this invention was a British chemist,
01:37named Humphrey Davy.
01:39He assembled two electric wires,
01:41a battery and a carbon battery elements,
01:44which emitted enough light to lighten the surroundings.
01:47But even these lamps to arcs were not yet adapted to lighten the ruses at the beginning,
01:52mainly because they were not very efficient.
01:55They needed a power power electric power to produce light,
01:58so that they needed to be equipped with big batteries to provide the necessary energy.
02:04All this made the lamp to arcs difficult to use and also very expensive.
02:09The name of Edison is certainly the one you associate to the invention of the electric power.
02:14The truth is that these works only represent a part of this revolutionary innovation.
02:19Other scientists, such as Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy and Joseph Swan,
02:24have also contributed.
02:26Before continuing our history,
02:27look at how modern lamps work.
02:31Each one of them is divided into two main parts.
02:34The first is a concrete room,
02:36the part made of glass,
02:37which is filled with a inert gas gas.
02:39This type of gas is crucial,
02:41because it does not interact with other chemical substances,
02:44creating an environment comparable to the void.
02:47The second part is a thin filament,
02:49or a conductor.
02:50It is the part of the ampoule where you can observe the electricity.
02:54A metal, called tungsten,
02:57is often chosen to produce these elements of our days.
03:00And because of its high point of fusion,
03:03it makes the ampoules more durable.
03:05Once you turn an ampoule,
03:06the electricity traverse this filament,
03:09which is heating the environment inerte.
03:10This heat causes quickly
03:12an emission of large amounts of light
03:14by the tungsten filament. Now, we go back to the story of Edison. In
03:20looking at the previous discoveries, he noticed that the problem of efficiency
03:24of the ampoule was linked to its filament. To make it more comfortable, the filament
03:28had to be more thin. Why? Because more the filament is thin, less it needs
03:34electrical power to work. This allowed so to solve the problem of batteries and
03:39additional generators. Ainsi, at the end of the 1870, Edison created an ampoule
03:45which had a platinum filament in an ampoule in an ampoule. Edison and his team
03:50continued to test more than 3000 different models of ampoules between the
03:551878 and 1890. He also tried more than 6000 plants to see
04:00which material would be best adapted to use filament. Everything was tried,
04:04from cotton to lin to wood. Finally, they discovered that
04:08filament of carbon steel could burn for more than 1000 hours. They therefore opted for
04:14this material for a certain time. But the more durable materials, like the
04:17tungsten, replaced it at the beginning of 1900. In our days, an ampoule standard can
04:23durate between 1000 and 2000 hours. But there is an ampoule which is famous for
04:27having beaten all the records. The story tells us that in 1901, a small ampoule had
04:32been placed at the ceiling of a bomber bomber bomber in California. It was an ampoule of 60 watts,
04:38used at the time to clear the cars even during the day. It's why it was almost
04:44never closed. And it's perhaps one of the reasons why it took so long.
04:49Another reason for this length is its composition. The filament of this
04:53ampoule is not made of tungsten, but of carbon. Contrairement to metals, the carbon
04:59conduit better electricity when it is heated. In addition, such a filament is much more
05:04thick than what we see in the modern ampoules. It's not easy to say that this ampoule
05:09still works. It has now more than 100 years and has even its own official website on
05:14internet, even though it has not been released since 2018. In our days, we
05:19surnomons l'ampoule centenaire. Et la raison pour laquelle tant de gens célèbrent cette invention
05:24est son incroyable capacité à résister à l'épreuve du temps. Ne serait-ce pas génial
05:29si toutes les ampoules duraient aussi longtemps ? Hélas, ce n'est pas à l'ordre du jour, car
05:34cela va à l'encontre d'une stratégie commerciale bien trop répandue. Il s'agit de l'obsolescence
05:39programmée. Aussi sophistiquée que le concept puisse paraître, c'est en fait une arnaque. Elle repose
05:45sur des produits faits pour ne durer que pendant un temps limité. Ceux-ci cessent de fonctionner
05:50artificiellement, et la durée pendant laquelle ils demeurent en bon état de marche est définie
05:55dès la conception. Finalement, vous devrez les faire réparer ou les remplacer. Et, à
06:00long terme, les gens finissent par consommer toujours plus. Prenons l'exemple de l'ampoule
06:04centenaire. Si tous les dispositifs similaires étaient conçus pour durer plus de 100 ans, les
06:10gens finiraient par cesser d'en acheter. Une industrie entière disparaîtrait, du moins
06:15sur le long terme. Un homme d'affaires londonien a donc échafaudé un plan en 1932. Il l'a
06:21baptisé « Obsolescence programmée ». Il défendait l'idée que la vente de biens à
06:25la durée de vie limitée signifiait que davantage de marchandises seraient découlées
06:30à long terme. Ainsi, il estimait que dans une économie globale, tant qu'il y avait un
06:35équilibre stable entre l'offre et la demande, tout le monde ne pouvait qu'y gagner. Son idée
06:40a toujours été loin de susciter l'unanimité. Et pour une bonne raison, je veux dire, il est
06:45vraiment agaçant de devoir continuellement acheter de nouveaux produits, surtout si ce n'est pas
06:50vraiment nécessaire. De plus, cela signifie énormément de gaspillage. Il existe de nombreuses
06:56façons de rendre un produit obsolète, et certaines sont moins évidentes que vous ne
07:00l'auriez cru. Regardez certains des appareils de votre maison, comme un téléphone, un ordinateur
07:05ou même une machine à laver. Et vérifiez si vous pouvez identifier certains des exemples
07:10suivants. Ces appareils peuvent notamment manquer de pièces de rechange. Ils sont délibérément
07:15conçus pour se comporter comme un seul bloc. Vous ne pouvez pas simplement les démonter
07:20et remplacer l'élément qui a cessé de fonctionner. En d'autres termes, ces produits ne peuvent
07:25pas être réparés. Une fois cassés, vous n'avez plus qu'à les racheter. Les ampoules
07:30sont en fait un très bon exemple de pareils produits. Avez-vous déjà essayé de remplacer
07:35le filament d'une ampoule qui a cessé de fonctionner ? Je veux dire, l'enveloppe
07:39de verre pourrait encore servir, mais il n'y a aucun moyen de redonner vie à une ampoule
07:43une fois le filament cassé. Il existe ensuite des produits qui deviennent tout simplement
07:48incompatibles avec des versions plus récentes. C'est un processus que nous observons de plus
07:53en plus souvent, car la technologie progresse à une vitesse encore jamais observée auparavant.
07:58C'est ainsi qu'un jour vous pourriez vous apercevoir qu'il n'y a plus de mise à jour
08:02disponible sur un appareil spécifique. Vous pourriez aussi constater que si votre téléphone
08:07est assez vieux, certaines applications n'y fonctionneront tout simplement plus. C'est
08:11parce qu'elles exploitent des technologies plus récentes, qui, dans la plupart des cas,
08:16ne sont pas compatibles avec les appareils plus anciens.
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