[1] Corporations based in Europe and the United States, including Tungsram, Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries, and Philips,[2] incorporated the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva,[3] as Phœbus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Éclairage (French for "Phoebus plc Industrial Company for the Development of Lighting").
Increasing international competition led to negotiations among all the major companies to control and restrict their respective activities in order not to interfere in each other's spheres.
[5][6] The Phoebus cartel's compact was intended to expire in 1955, but it was instead nullified in 1940 after World War II made coordination among the members impossible.
As part of the decision, while acknowledging that "it should be borne in mind that the life of a lamp is inextricably related to the power of its light", it nonetheless found that because of General Electric's dominant industry position and lack of competition it had the power to determine bulb lifespan across the entire industry, and that General Electric's main consideration in setting the lifespans of bulbs was profit.
[10] In Gravity's Rainbow (1973), Thomas Pynchon wrote about "Byron the Bulb", an anthropomorphic eternal lightbulb who fights against the Phoebus cartel.