This seems to have been reverted only moments ago. Perhaps a disgruntled person from HN trying to force learned false history on Wikipedia?
Please watch the video from Technology Connections linked above to understand why a) Phoebus was indeed a cartel but b) which did not have as nefarious purposes as has been later claimed by e.g. populist TV documentaries such as "The Light Bulb Conspiracy".
I believe you that the efficiency argument played a role when they decided to reduce the life expectancy of the light bulbs. The cartel doing 'cartel-things' aside, the 1000h-limit probably was a good decision even though I think that they ultimately did not do it for the consumer.
Some insights:
- The peak DC voltage seems to be around 1.15 kV.
- The time constant is around 440 s. If you were to assume a simple RC-circuit with a constant voltage source (which it probably isnt), you would end at around 100 Ohm for the resistor.
- The start of the charging curve is not at the same time as in the video indicating that some voltage was already present from experiments before the video
Also, I am pretty sure it is not inductive coupling but capacitive because of several reasons:
- It doesn't look like a coax cable but more like an ordinary thick wire.
- I am pretty sure he didn't ground the cable at the far end and thus did not create a loop necessary for induction. And if he were, inductive coupling with ground in between would result in a very large voltage drop - If it were inductive: A single loop covering that little area would need way more turns than just one.