The Phoebus Cartel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
The Phoebus cartel was a cartel of, among others, Osram, Philips and General Electric from December 23, 1924 until 1939 that existed to control the manufacture and sale of light bulbs.
The cartel is an important step in the history of global economy because of their involvement in the creation of great-scale planned obsolescence.
Purpose
The cartel served as a convenient way to lower costs and took on considerable efforts to cap the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1000 hours,[3] while at the same time hiking prices without fear of competition. Standardization of light bulbs was another side-effect of the cartel.