The peak decade for articles discussing planned obsolescence was the 1960s, after which the term drops away somewhat, until the 1990s, which show an increase over the preceding decade.6 This pattern reflects the heightened concern about planned obsolescence in the late 1950s and 1960s, the ebbing of the issue in the later 1970s and 1980s, and then, toward the end of the century, the increasing importance of a new context of application for the concept, with the rapid growth of the information technology industry.
Insofar as the term planned obsolescence has a presence in the 1930s (and it does not to any significant degree), it is in relation to debates and discussions about the role of underconsumption in producing, or prolonging, the Depression. The term first appears in print in the work of businessman Bernard London, whose pamphlet How to End the Depression by Means of Planned Obsolescence was published in 1932. The nature and scope of London’s argument is quite explicit in its title. London advocated using planned obsolescence to increase consumer demand by reducing the length of ownership of things. The benefit of this would be that it would provide muchneeded stimulus for the depressed economy. This use of planned obsolescence was similar to an earlier term, progressive obsolescence, which was used by the American home economist Christine Frederick in her influential 1929 book, Selling Mrs. Consumer.7 Like Charles Babbage a century earlier, Frederick (1929, p. 81) saw progressive obsolescence as a natural and necessary byproduct of the onward march of technology and industrial society: “The machine and power era makes it not only possible but vital to apply in the home the doctrine of creative waste.” Frederick defined progressive obsolescence as :“1) A state of mind which is highly suggestible and open;
Moral Panic about Utility
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