General Electric Co
of 44 Broad Street, New York.
otherwise known as GE, or the International General Electric Co, distinguishing it from GEC, otherwise referred to as The General Electric Company Ltd
1878 Thomas Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company of New York
1880 Edison established the Edison Electric Illuminating Co
1882 The Pilsen Electric Light could be seen in operation at High Holborn and Seven Sisters Road, London; estimates were available from Pilsen-Joel and General Electric Light Co Ltd, Telegraph St, London EC[1].
1882 The Edison Electric Illuminating Company constructed America's first central power station in New York City.
1889 The Edison Electric Light Company (the patent-holding company) merged with Edison's three electric light manufacturing companies (Edison Lamp Company, Edison Machine Works, and Bergmann and Company), to become the Edison General Electric Company.
1890 Edison established a factory to make incandescent lamps at Menlo Park, New Jersey, USA.
1892 The General Electric Co was created by the merger of the Thomson-Houston Co, another manufacturer of dynamos and electric lights, and the Edison Electric Co. [2]
1894 Established British Thomson-Houston (BTH) which was majority owned by General Electric Co.
1900 General Electric Co established the first industrial laboratory in the USA dedicated entirely to scientific research. The 3-person laboratory was located at Schenectady, NY.
1901 After five years of research GE constructed its own design of steam turbine generator. Orders for the turbines followed almost immediately, and by 1903 a 5,000-kilowatt turbine was in use at the Commonwealth Edison power company in Chicago.
1903 Acquired the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of transformers.
1903 Description of a 60ft. vertical boring and turning mill designed by Mr. John Riddell, the superintendent of the works, which, owing to its immense proprtions and weight of material, it was found necessary to build at the works. [3]
1906 The first GE major appliance, an electric (cooker) range, was introduced.
1918 GE merged with Pacific Electric Heating Company, maker of the Hotpoint iron, and Hughes Electric Heating Company, maker of an electric range; the company formed Edison Electric Appliance Company to sell products under the GE and Hotpoint brands.
1919 GE, AT&T, and Westinghouse formed the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to develop radio technology.
1924 GE exited the utilities business following government antitrust action.
1930 Sold its holdings in RCA because of antitrust considerations.
1930 Description of 12.5 kVA and 20kVA hydrogen-cooled synchronous condensers[4]
1931 Description of the mercury vapour turbine-based generating plant at the South Meadow Station of the
Hartford Electric Light Co, conceived and worked out by W. LeRoy Emmet of GE.
'Mercury has, of course, two obvious disadvantages for purposes of power production. It is very expensive, costing something like 5s. per lb., and air
contaminated by its fumes is so poisonous as to be dangerous. In other respects, however, mercury is
almost an ideal working agent for use at high temperatures. Its critical temperature is very high. Its
pressure is moderate at the highest temperatures to which steel containers can well be subjected. Its latent heat of vaporisation over the temperature range required is very large in comparison with its sensible heat. Hence the liquid line of its temperature-entropy diagram is nearly vertical, so that the work area theoretically available on the Rankine cycle differs but little from that of the corresponding Carnot cycle. This property conduces both to thermodynamic efficiency and to simplification.
In general outline, the method of operation may
be described as follows:—
Pure mercury is vaporised in a suitable boiler heated by fuel in a manner
somewhat different from, but generally equivalent
to, that adopted with steam. The vapour which has
a low pressure but high temperature, is conveyed
by a suitable system of pipes to a turbine, which
as compared with a modern steam turbine is of a
relatively simple type. After passing through this
turbine in which it does a large amount of work,
the mercury is exhausted at a moderate degree of
vacuum into a condenser, which has the additional
function of acting as a steam generator. The work
done by the mercury turbine is not very different
from that which would be obtained from a condensing
steam turbine operated with a moderate steam
pressure and superheat, and using the same quantity of fuel in the furnace. The heat rate, fuel to
electricity, of this mercury turbine and its generator,
is in fact, about 20,000 B.Th.U. per kilowatt-hour,
the initial pressure at the turbine inlet being about
70 lb. per square inch, and the vacuum 28 1/2 ... installed at Hartford in 1923. This has since been
followed up by a 10,000-kw. mercury turbine plant. .... Hence,
... in this type of mercury plant the equivalent of
about 25 per cent more power is being obtained from the fuel than if steam alone were used. ....'[5]
1938 GE introduced the fluorescent lamp.
1943 General Electric Capital Corporation was established.
1949 Under antitrust pressure, the company was forced to release its light bulb patents to other companies.
1955 The U.S. Navy launched the submarine Seawolf, powered by a GE nuclear reactor.
1957 GE received a license from the Atomic Energy Commission to operate a nuclear power plant; completion of an enormous appliance manufacturing site, Appliance Park, in Louisville, Kentucky.
1961 The company pleaded guilty to price fixing on electrical equipment and was fined nearly half a million dollars.
1976 Spent $2.2 billion to acquire Utah International, a major coal, copper, uranium, and iron miner and a producer of natural gas and oil.
1981 John F. (Jack) Welch, Jr., became chairman and CEO.
1986 Acquired RCA, which included the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), for $6.4 billion. Also acquired Employers Reinsurance for $1.1 billion, as well as an 80 percent stake in Kidder Peabody.
1987 Sold its own and RCA's television manufacturing businesses to the French company Thomson in exchange for Thomson's medical diagnostics business.
1994 Liquidated Kidder Peabody.
2000 Announced a $45 billion deal to take over Honeywell International Inc.
2001 The Honeywell deal was blocked by European Commission; Welch retired and was succeeded by Jeffrey R. Immelt; acquired Heller Financial Inc., a global commercial finance company, for $5.3 billion.
2002 NBC acquired Telemundo Communications Group Inc.
2004 Immelt reorganized GE's 13 business units into 11 units focused on specific markets and customers. The most significant of the changes included combining the firm's aircraft engines business and its rail-related operations in a new GE Transportation unit; merging most of GE Industrial Systems with GE Consumer Products to form GE Consumer & Industrial, which focused on lighting products, appliances, and integrated industrial equipment, systems, and services; and forming GE Infrastructure from certain operations of GE Industrial Systems and GE Specialty Materials. GE continued disposing of its insurance operations. What was left of GE Insurance was mainly its reinsurance business, widely expected to be another candidate for divestment.
2004 Acquired British health sciences firm Amersham plc for $9.5 billion. Acquired Vivendi Universal Entertainment for $14 billion, which was then combined with NBC to form NBC Universal.
2019 Merger of Wabtec and GE Transportation
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ The Standard, September 27, 1882
- ↑ The Times Feb. 6, 1892
- ↑ The Engineer 1903/10/16
- ↑ Engineering 1930/04/25
- ↑ Engineering 1931/01/16