General Electric

General Electric

1876 was the year that Thomas Alva Edison opened his own laboratory in Menlo Park to explore the possibilities of the dynamo and other electrical devices that were viewed at the exposition. This led to the invention of the incandescent light bulb and the birth of the Edison General Electric Company.

At the same time there was a major competitor called The Thomson-Houston Company, Both companies realized that their dreams and goals could not be achieved individually and this was the start of The General Electric Company as we know it today.

General Electric is such a diverse company being involved lighting, transportation, industrial products, power transmission, medical equipment and the aviation industry. With the development of the plastic filament within the incandescent light bulb sparked the plastics company within General Electric. At the beginning of the 20th century, the company had the first voice radio broadcast in the world, the first electric toaster, and began work on vacuum tubes that would herald the dawn of the electronic age. In the 1910s and 1920s General Electric continued to innovate, setting a new altitude record with an airplane, making the refrigerator a common household word, and building the world’s largest electrical facility on the Panama Canal.

Through the Great Depression, GE continued to innovate in other ways, introducing a Consumer Finance system to allow consumers to buy appliances for the home even in hard times. In the era of World War II, the company assisted with the war effort, innovating in radar technology, and creating the first jet engine. From the 1950s through to the new millennium, General Electric continued to grow, tapping into emerging markets and investing massive resources in pushing the bounds of technologies across every sector.

With the recognition that the way to stay in front of the competition and continue growing was to establish their own research department. This started in a...