The lightbulbs thing was (possibly) different. There's some physical limits on the performance of lightbulbs so the time to failure test was more of a proxy to make sure bulbs of a certain wattage were outputting similar strength and color light.
I don't know if there were other reasons this glass tech didn't catch on besides the obvious capitalism issues, but the lightbulb thing is definitely a misunderstood piece of trivia.
Also has led to a vibrant market for old Pyrex, made with borosilicate before they switched to soda-lime. Borosilicate is generally much more resistant to thermal shock (though there are some advantages to soda lime, but the big reason is that it's cheaper)
I discovered the difference the hard way in college when I shattered a pyrex measuring cup by pouring boiling water into it. Four cups of boiling water and glass shards everywhere!