Created in 1892, the General Electric Company (GE) invented and produced numerous products that changed the way ordinary Americans lived their lives. GE’s formation in 1892 was an attempt to manufacture and distribute many of the new electrical products that had been invented by Thomas Alva Edison and others. Edison had formed his own corporation, the Edison Electrical Light Company, in 1878, which then became the Edison General Electric Company. Engineered by financier J. P. Morgan, General Electric merged the competing manufacturers, Edison General and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company.
In 1900, GE created a research lab in Schenectady, New York, with the hope that it would be able to duplicate the kind of creative environment Edison had established at his famed Menlo Park. GE president Edwin Rice set out to hire leading scientists from around the world. According to Rice, “It has been deemed wise during the past year to establish a laboratory devoted exclusively to original research. It is hoped by this means that many profitable fields may be discovered.” The idea of committing a large amount of money to research and development, with no guarantee that anything profitable or marketable would come from it, revolutionized American industry. Prior to the development of industrial research labs, innovations were the domain of individual scientists and inventors. Corporations emerged only after new products or new ideas were developed. GE spared no expense in building the labs, developed close ties with university science departments, and hired some of the leading scientists of the day, including Charles Steinmetz, William Coolidge, Irving Langmuir (who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1932), and Willis Whitney. Whitney, who had been a chemistry professor at MIT prior to joining GE, served as head of the company’s research lab between 1900 and 1928.
From the very beginning, the work of GE’s research laboratory was extremely productive and profitable. Early triumphs included innovations in the incandescent light bulb, vacuum tubes, and an X-ray machine. Improvements in lighting allowed GE to play an important role in the emerging electrification and lighting industry as communities and individuals brought electricity and electric lighting into their towns and homes. By 1930, GE had become one of the most prominent and profitable companies in the country; and its products, including radios, refrigerators, and stoves, began appearing in every household.
See also ELECTRICITY; INVENTION AND TECHNOLOGY.
Further reading: Leonard S. Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876-1926 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Ronald Schatz, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923-1968 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).
—Robert Gordon
World History
