author
Bernard London
b. 1872
Best remembered for a bold 1932 pamphlet that argued economies should fight stagnation by shortening the useful life of products, this Russian-born American real estate broker is often linked to the early history of the idea now called planned obsolescence.
1 Audiobook
Ending the depression through planned obsolescence
by Bernard London
About the author
Born in 1872 or 1873, Bernard London was a Russian-born American real estate broker who became known less for property than for a striking economic argument. During the Great Depression, he wrote Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence (1932), a pamphlet that proposed giving goods a fixed lifespan so people would keep buying new ones and factories would keep working.
That proposal was controversial, but it made him historically notable. Later writers and scholars have often credited him with helping popularize, and sometimes with coining, the term "planned obsolescence."
Very little biographical detail appears to be widely documented beyond those points, so most accounts focus on that single influential pamphlet and its place in debates about consumer culture, waste, and modern industrial design.