General Electric
General Electric Company was an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the state of New York and headquartered, during its final year of operation, in Boston.
Over the years, the company had multiple divisions, including aerospace, transportation, energy, healthcare, lighting, locomotives, appliances, and finance. In 2020, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 33rd largest firm in the United States by gross revenue. In 2023, the company was ranked 64th in the Forbes Global 2000. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th most profitable company, but later very severely underperformed the market as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE—Irving Langmuir and Ivar Giaever —have been awarded the Nobel Prize. From 1986 until 2013, GE was the owner of the NBC television network through its purchase of its former subsidiary RCA before its acquisition of NBC's parent company NBCUniversal by Comcast in 2011.
Following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, General Electric began selling off various divisions and assets, including its appliances and financial capital divisions, under Jeff Immelt's leadership as CEO. John Flannery, Immelt's replacement in 2017, further divested General Electric's assets in locomotives and lighting in order to focus the company more on aviation. Restrictions on air travel during the COVID-19 pandemic caused General Electric's revenue to fall significantly in 2020. Ultimately, GE's final CEO Larry Culp announced in November 2021 that General Electric was to be broken up into three separate, public companies by 2024. GE Aerospace, the aerospace company, is GE's legal successor. GE HealthCare, the health technology company, was spun off from GE in 2023. GE Vernova, the energy company, was founded when GE finalized the split. Following these transactions, GE Aerospace took the General Electric name and ticker symbols, while the old General Electric ceased to exist as a conglomerate.
History
Formation
During 1889, Thomas Edison had business interests in many electricity-related companies, including Edison Lamp Company, a lamp manufacturer in East Newark, New Jersey; Edison Machine Works, a manufacturer of dynamos and large electric motors in Schenectady, New York; Bergmann & Company, a manufacturer of electric lighting fixtures, sockets, and other electric lighting devices; and Edison Electric Light Company, the patent-holding company and financial arm for Edison's lighting experiments, backed by J. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family.Henry Villard, a long-time Edison supporter and investor, proposed to consolidate all of these business interests. The proposal was supported by Samuel Insull - who served as his secretary and, later, financier - as well other investors. In 1889, Drexel, Morgan & Co.—a company founded by J. P. Morgan and Anthony J. Drexel—financed Edison's research and helped merge several of Edison's separate companies under one corporation, forming Edison General Electric Company, which was incorporated in New York on April 24, 1889. The new company acquired Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company in the same year. The consolidation did not involve all of the companies established by Edison; notably, the Edison Illuminating Company, which would later become Consolidated Edison, was not part of the merger.
In 1880, Gerald Waldo Hart formed the American Electric Company of New Britain, Connecticut, which merged a few years later with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, led by Charles Coffin. In 1887, Hart left to become superintendent of the Edison Electric Company. General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co. The original plants of both companies continue to operate under the GE banner to this day.
The General Electric business was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant used as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric's Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed.
In 1893, General Electric brought Charles Steinmetz on board through the acquisition of smaller New York company. A genius in both mathematics and electronics, he earned over 200 patents and proved a major force in advancing GE, recognized today in Steinmetz's equation, Steinmetz solids, Steinmetz curves, the Steinmetz equivalent circuit, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers prestigious IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award.
Public company
In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average, where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously.File:Carmen Miranda by General Electric.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=1945 magazine ad for an FM radio with pictures of Miranda|Carmen Miranda in a 1945 advertisement for a General Electric FM radio in The Saturday Evening Post
In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association into its lighting business. GE established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio. The lighting division has since remained in the same location.
RCA and NBC
Owen D. Young, who was then GE's general counsel and vice president, through GE, founded the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. This came after Young, while working with senior naval officers, purchased the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, which was a subsidiary of the British company Marconi Wireless and Signal Company. He aimed to expand international radio communications. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales. In 1926, RCA co-founded the National Broadcasting Company, which built two radio broadcasting networks. In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations and was ordered to divest itself of RCA.Television
In 1927, Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of television broadcast reception at his General Electric Realty Plot home at 1132 Adams Road in Schenectady, New York. On January 13, 1928, he made what was said to be the first broadcast to the public in the United States on GE's W2XAD: the pictures were picked up on 1.5 square inches screens in the homes of four GE executives. The sound was broadcast on GE's WGY.Experimental television station W2XAD evolved into the station WRGB, which, along with WGY and WGFM, was owned and operated by General Electric until 1983. In 1965, the company expanded into cable with the launch of a franchise, which was awarded to a non-exclusive franchise in Schenectady through subsidiary General Electric Cablevision Corporation. On February 15, 1965, General Electric expanded its holdings in order to acquire more television stations to meet the maximum limit of the FCC, and more cable holdings through subsidiaries General Electric Broadcasting Company and General Electric Cablevision Corporation.
The company also owned television stations such as KOA-TV in Denver and WSIX-TV in Nashville, but like WRGB, General Electric sold off most of its broadcasting holdings, but held on to the Denver television station until in 1986, when General Electric bought out RCA and made it into an owned-and-operated station by NBC. It even stayed on until 1995 when it was transferred to a joint venture between CBS and Group W in a swap deal, alongside KUTV in Salt Lake City for longtime CBS O&O in Philadelphia, WCAU-TV.
Former General Electric-owned stations
Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and city of license.- Indicates a station that was built and signed on by General Electric.
| City of license / Market | Station | Channel TV | Years owned | Current ownership status |
| Denver, Colorado | KCNC-TV | 4 | 1968–1986 | CBS owned-and-operated station, owned by CBS News and Stations |
| Albany, New York | WRGB ** | 6 | 1942–1983 | CBS affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group |
| Nashville, Tennessee | WNGE | 2 | 1966–1983 | ABC affiliate WKRN-TV owned by Nexstar Media Group |
Radio stations
Power generation
Led by Sanford Alexander Moss, GE moved into the new field of aircraft turbosuperchargers. This technology also led to the development of industrial gas turbine engines used for power production. GE introduced the first set of superchargers during World War I and continued to develop them during the interwar period. Superchargers became indispensable in the years immediately before World War II. GE supplied 300,000 turbosuperchargers for use in fighter and bomber engines. This work led the U.S. Army Air Corps to select GE to develop the nation's first jet engine during the war. This experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine that was demonstrated in the United States in 1941. GE was ranked ninth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. However, their early work with Whittle's designs was later handed to Allison Engine Company. GE Aviation then emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, bypassing the British company Rolls-Royce plc.Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs, refrigerators, and other products during the 1980s and 1990s. The purpose of the boycott was to protest against GE's role in nuclear weapons production.
In 2002, GE acquired the wind power assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings. Enron Wind was the only surviving U.S. manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time, and GE increased engineering and supplies for the Wind Division and doubled the annual sales to $1.2 billion in 2003. It acquired ScanWind in 2009.
In 2018, GE Power garnered press attention when a model 7HA gas turbine in Texas was shut down for two months due to the break of a turbine blade. This model uses similar blade technology to GE's newest and most efficient model, the 9HA. After the break, GE developed new protective coatings and heat treatment methods. Gas turbines represent a significant portion of GE Power's revenue, and also represent a significant portion of the power generation fleet of several utility companies in the United States. Chubu Electric of Japan and Électricité de France also had units that were impacted. Initially, GE did not realize the turbine blade issue of the 9FB unit would impact the new HA units.