The GE Story, Part 1

that might be from excellent. Um. Actually, today we're off to see the Wizard. Yes, well sort of the Wizard of Men. Yeah, so before we before everyone gets excited, we are not doing an episode specifically about Thomas Alva Edison. In this episode We're gonna be talking about him a lot, but this episode is really about the first of a three part series about the company General Electric or g E.

And why might we be mentioning uh, Mr Thomas albat Edison. Well, probably because he was one of four people that you could credit the whole existence of GE. Uh, you know, without whom g would not exist, right. Yeah. The other three, I would argue would be Charles A. Coffin, Eli, Hugh Thompson, and Edwin Houston or Houston. I have no idea how he would have pronounced his name. I've heard it both ways.

So but but Edison of clearly is the the name that jumps out at people when you talk about General Electric. And it's no surprise. He was a famous inventor, UH, an engineer. He was a great businessman. He was a very good showman. UH and UH and in his day he was the equivalent to a rock star, you know. I mean the newspapers wrote about them, and people would flock to see demonstrations the same way you might go and try and get those second row seats to see you know, a C D C. Yeah, there we go.

That's that's awesome. I'm sorry, I just had to throw that in there. I was struggling to figure out a good band name to throw in. But a C D C S works so well. Yeah. Yeah, Well, the reason I wanted to uh to start with UH with Edison specifically and Jonathan Thrt. The these uh, these four gentlemen are crucial in understanding where ge comes from. But uh, you know, in in business, the business world, when two companies decide to merge, they will often take the name

that they think will be the most successful. And G E actually the name itself derives mostly from Edison's company that he started, Edison General Electric. And to to know about ess in General Electric, we actually have to go a little further back, because g traces its history back to even before Edison General Electric existed. All right, so, uh, you've got in eighteen seventies six. Okay, so Edison was

born in eighty seven. Uh So Esson goes in E and moves to Menlo Park, New Jersey, which is now called Edison, New Jersey. Yes, no relation, there's no muection. No, just no, it was it was weird. I don't know. No, No, it is of course named after Thomas Alva Edison. Um. So, in eighteen seventy six he creates and an industrial research

lab in Menlo Park. And and this was a lab specifically meant to help study and and push innovation in industry, not just not just you know, a think tank, but they were Esson was really looking at ways to improve systems and create technology that would be useful in some way. And and that was his focus. So that's what GE traces its history back to, was that the formation of that lab up in eighteen seventy six, which is kind of funny because when you think about it, there were

other things going on at the same time. That ge also owes its existence too, And really you could argue since the Edison, the General Edison or the Edison General Electric Company didn't exist yet. In fact, that wouldn't exist until eighteen ninety. It's kind of interesting to see the centennial trace back to um eighteen seventy six. But in eighteen seventy eight Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company, which was one of the many companies that would eventually

kind of meld together to become Edison General Electric. And uh, you guys probably know or at least have heard about Edison and his relationship with the lightbulb. He did not invent the light bulb. He he created an incandescent lightbulb that actually was useful, But there were other inventors who

had come up with incandescent light bulbs before Edison. It's just that they were they would light for very brief amount of time and then they burn out, and so Edison was the one who actually managed to improve upon that. So we often credit him with creating the lightbulb, because

he really created the first useful one, right. And then, of course, uh, one of the things that we touched on a moment ago about him being a shrewd business person, um, he was good about once he had uh set out to create this, this new lightbulb, this more effective lightbulb. He also got into the business of helping wire people's homes because hey, I mean, let's let's look at it from this perspective. You've got a lightbulb, but people's homes

aren't wired for electricity. So what's the point. Yes, how many people does it take? The scruminal label doesn't matter. We don't have electricity exactly. And so there there were a lot of um, wealthy business people who wanted electricity. I mean, hey, this is pretty cool, um. And so Mr Edison was in the habit of, um he really wanted to set up an entire system and uh, you know that's really kind of the background. But behind starting this uh laboratory, as Jonathan likes to say, is hey,

let's find ways to capitalize on this. We can we can do this, and we can wire homes. Let's let's what else can we do to capitalize on what we know about electricity, and so he really got into the business along with all the other people with whom he worked, of really making an electrical industry. And that's really what g E is about. And he was even looking at things like electric railways, which that that was that was

the method of transportation back at that time. You know, if you were traveling, if you weren't traveling by rail, you're traveling by horse like electric trolleys, street cars. So that these were really important projects for him, and and you know, to be able to develop these things, you also had to develop the infrastructure. I mean the infrastructure

didn't exist either. So this was an enormous undertaking. And he employed lots and lots of other folks working with him, many of whom contributed UH to the innovative developments in the General Electric Company, both before and after it actually became GE. So nine he starts to UH to merge these different companies that he started together and calls it Edison General Electric. So it makes sense it's all these

different specialized companies and now it's General Yes exactly. Yeah, because because it wouldn't make sense to call it one thing, like call it the Electric you know, the Electric Light Company, but they also work in rail. Yes, you know, that just doesn't make sense unless it's light rail. But anyway, so at the same time that this is going on,

there's another company called the American Electric Company. Yep. Now we touched on on one of Edison's major rivalries before on the podcast, of course, that being a Mr Tesla who's photo is still staring a hole into the side of your head. Yes. Yes. One of the funny things about this studio that we record in is, I mean, everybody on all the House stuff works dot Com podcast records in this room. Yet we have Edison and Tesla in here with us, and all the other famous people

photos are out out there. So yeah, anyhow, we we touched on his relationship. We also, um, I don't recall if we mentioned George Westinghouse in that podcast. He have He of course was uh sort of instrumental in working with Tesla to bring around a C when when Edison wanted d C as the standard. But there were other people who were competing with Edison for the purposes of wiring homes and bringing electric lighting to homes and businesses.

I should say, yeah, no, no, the American Electric Company was one of those, and they were They were out of New Britain, Connecticut, and there was a group of investors there that was in charge of financing the company. But the company was kind of struggling, and the company had been founded had been founded by two of those gentlemen I had engined earlier, Elihu Thompson and Edwin Houston,

both of whom were engineers Uh and Uh. Thompson was an engineer, an inventor, and Houston was an electrical electrical engineer. And they they had founded this company. The investors had put their money into it, but they were kind of

stuck in this tiny little region. There were some other investors who thought that the company had potential to grow and blossom, but it needed to get out from under the thumb of those investors, and so they called in a fellow named Charles A. Coffin, who was a businessman. He was not an engineer. He was a guy who had a shoe factory um and what a very successful one.

Had become quite a wealthy man, and he was called in to actually buy out this company from under these investors, and it was renamed the Thompson Houston Electric Company, and it actually flourished. It did really well, in fact, so well that it was rivaling Edison's General Electric Company, especially in specific regions. In fact, Thompson Houston Electric, you know, one of the city's, one of the stays we're very very close to right now, was wired by Thompson Houston originally.

Really yeah, they'd be hard Lanta, Georgia. What, yes, indeed, yeah, it turns out that Mr Coffin was there for the undertaking. Yes, and both talk more about Coffin as well. So well, now I was gonna say, you remember when we talked

about the Colombian Exposition, the Chicago World's Fair. Uh, Thompson Houston was one of the rivals to Edison for lighting that exposition, and they you know, there was a bitter, bitter rivalry between the two companies there for a while, but they kissed and made up because in eighteen ninety two, so just two years after Edison General Electric was founded, in Edison, General Electric and Thompson Houston Electric merged and they formed General Electric. And the very first CEO of

General Electric was Charles A. Coffin. Well, look at that, so Edison was considered a founder of General Electric and Coffin, since he had shown a very acute sense of business acumen. As it was an obtuse, it was acute. Uh. He he ended up being the guy in charge and he

started to um to really take take initiative. And in fact he had a big test early, early, early on in the history of ge in eight so just one year after the company had been founded, out of these other two separate companies, Uh, Coffin had to guide the company through what was called the Panic of eighte. Yeah, it was a it was an economic depression. So we're just getting weird sound effects through the rest of this podcast. It's great, it's no work at all for our producer. Hi, Annie,

we have a new producer today. Uh, she's stepping in capably. I might add. So in eightee, you have this economic depression that actually was part of an economic bubble. In this case, in e it was a railroad bubble. There was such a run on trying to build out railroads throughout the country that there was an overbuilding problem, and this overbuilding problem ended up having a bubble burst and

then banks began to fail. So if this sounds familiar, it's because you could say the housing bubble was very similar to the railroad bubble, and that, in fact, we do not learn from our own history. But that's first stuff you missed in history class. This is tech stuff.

I will concentrate on the tech anyway. Coffin ended up making this deal with banks where they would lend loans to g E in return for utility stock, and that actually kept the company going during this depression and they were able to ride it out and as a result,

they're still around today. So in eighteen five ge builds the world's largest electric locomotive, wow, ninety ton electric locomotive, and also builds transformers capable of moving this electric locomotive because without it, now you just have this enormous thing that sits there, just like the light bulb in the house that has no electricity. Uh. The transformers, which were

not Optimist Prime nor Megatron. We're talking about the transformers that are able to change electric current from one voltage to another effectively could handle up to eight kilowatts. And UH. Also that year in something else happened that would become an important part of GEES history. It was not directly involving g at this point, but there was a scientist named Vilhelm Conrad Rutgen. Yes, he discovered something. He discovered X rays. Yeah, you know, I've I've heard about this guy,

and uh I see right through him. Yeah, totally transparent. Actually, uh Renchen's work played a big part in GE. I mean, he's he's his work, UH will come up many times over the course of the next three podcasts two and a half podcast I should say, because GE one of gs major um industries that it's involved in is medical equipment,

especially medical imaging, but but medical equipment in general. And in fact that that first instance happened the next year, in so just one year after X rays had been first demonstrated to exist, Ali Hu Thompson created electrical equipment that was capable of producing X rays, which that that

actually launched gees foray into medical imaging equipment. That was the same year the GE got listed on the Dow in eight So yeah, they're UM, they're already making headway into to the industries that they would become known for further on in their in their history. And one of the really good things if you can, if you're a business person, if you can find an industry that is uh getting started and jump in with both feet, like like these people did, um, you can make us pretty

big um impact on the industry. And that's exactly what what G was doing at this point, because they were founding whole industries. Really, when you get down to it, I mean, the medical imaging field really didn't exist as we know it today. And of course now we know so much more about these things, but GE was certainly

a leader in that department. Yeah, and if you've listened to our other podcasts about companies, you've heard sort of similar stories, things like Texas Instruments being really into the whole the solid state electronics. I mean, uh, there are certain companies that really shaped the way these technologies developed. It's not just that they were innovators, but they actually because they got in so really they almost dictated to the rest of the world how these technologies would take form.

And uh and occasionally you'll see a company really depart from that and make something pretty cool, but more often than not, you find out that the form that was settled on by the company that founded it is the one that's the most stable. So yeah, G was doing some some really important work here, and in nineteen hundred they registered the trademark for the GE monogram. Yeah, that's the logo. Yeah. Um. And and this is not especially significant in a way, but in another it is because

they're still using that exact same logo. They have established themselves as a leading brand and they are. You know, it's it's a name known worldwide, and brand recognition is a tricky thing, right, you don't want to mess with it too much. And so GE has done a good job at preserving that the monogram itself has changed slightly.

Sometimes the color scheme changes a little bit, sometimes the the the lines are adjusted a little bit, but in general it's the same monogram as was trademarked back in And also in nineteen hundred, they established a research and development lab and uh, this was this is the one that most people say is the first lab in the United States that was dedicated just to scientific research. That's all it was meant for. Yeah, they realized that if if they could come up with a lab, a lab.

So now you're doing that. That's why I that's why I'm shortening it to lab. Now you don't hear me saying laboratory, Yes, that's true. Um, Yeah, the reason they wanted to start a lab was, uh, you know, you might think it's counterproductive. Well, if they're not necessarily working on uh ge stuff, how are they making money from this? Well,

they figured out that. Um, if they're working on uh, you know, in a in a general direction towards something that they want to accomplish that uh, they will make discoveries that they can use and capitalize on later. Um. And uh you know that's actually pretty common in the podcast that we've talked about that other companies have followed ges lead in this regard and has paid off for them. Yeah, I mean look at look at Google, and it's twenty

percent time. Now. You could also argue that a lot of the Google projects that came out of time ultimately kind of didn't go anywhere. But the point is is that a lot of innovation that eventually finds its way into Google products and services comes out of that twenty percent time. It may not be its own individual thing.

Like you might not point out a specific product and say this is the result of twenty time from Google, but you might see a feature that's in another product and say, actually that that grew out of other project that it wouldn't exist without it. So yeah, that's really gees recognition that the innovation is going to play a major role in an industry. And and of course this is an era in the United States history where industry

and innovation were paramount in in people's minds. I mean, it was one of those things that was just uh stressed by by the news and just the development of the industrial age overall. So it was an exciting time. Yeah, in the United States. Right around the same time, you've got the physicists who are making incredible discoveries. I mean, this is an era of discovery that is is hard to it's hard to exaggerate, you know, because it was

so amazingly important. It's like right up there with the Renaissance as far as uh, as as discoveries and and uh and the advancement of thought goes. Yeah, oh, by the way that that lab, that lab was in Schenectady, New York. Yeah, I keep on saying just New York. If I ever say just New York, it's chances are M saying s connected e, which I can't say. I just like saying Schenectady. Actually, that's going to come up a lot too, which is why I'm just going to

say New York. And then Chris can pop in with the actual town name, because I want to embarrass myself as as as a few times as possible in this podcast. You could say an area just northwest of Albany. There we go, just northwest of Albany. Is the place in New York? All right? In nineteen o two, a fellow names James J. Wood received a patent for an invention that GE ended up turning into a product. Do you

know what I'm talking about? That would be the electric fan? Yes, indeed, something that is incredibly important down here in the South. Also incredibly important for those of you who have computers, Yes, or at least a lot of computers, which require a very small electric fan to keep the processors from overheating and your computer from shutting down. Yes, we can thank

James Wood for that. Not James Woods, different guy. I mean, he's awesome and everything, and you could go up and thank him for the electric fan and he might even say you're welcome, But that's not the right guy. That was actually done for the Fort Wayne Electric Works. There's a really cool well to me, it was really cool, uh photo of this on the GE website because it's got, you know, the big f W E W thing right in the hub in the center of the fans. So

it's it's um, very um turn of the century looking. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. In n three, they created the world's largest steam turbine engine at that point. It was capable of generating five thousand kilowatts. They went to the Fisk Street station in Chicago, UM, and that was this is one of those things that Edison and his company beforehand, we're doing. They were working on ways to electrify parts

of the city. So they were very big into creating these stations that could be placed in local areas to provide electricity to uh, you know, different parts of the town. And um, how many people was it? It was? Uh, well it was it? Well, yeah, you said that you were talking about the killer watts, used less space and came in um under budget, and was more efficient than they expected it would be. Yeah, they thought that it was going to be. I think it was something like

four times larger than what it actually was. So it was it really spoke to the the skills of the engineers and the designers behind it, who were able to create a much more efficient system than they had originally imagined. Well, considering that we were talking about at the beginning of the podcast how this all started. This whole venture was started in the mid eighteen seventies, and we're talking about thirty years later and they're already making these these huge advances.

It just you know, and they really moved quickly. Speaking of huge advances, in nineteen o five, the Model D twelve hits the scene and changes the world. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Yes, the electric toaster. There's another really cool picture of the toaster because it has no side. Yeah. I just sit there and look at them like that just looks like potential second degree burn written all over it. Yes, keep the cat off the counter, Yeah, keep keep everything off again. Put the

electric toaster in the backyard. Yeah. Imagine if you will, the the traditional style vertical toaster where you dropped the bread inside the toaster and everything with the slots. But the thing is, yeah, and remove the casing so it's basically just the metal framework. And I'm sure it worked great. But yeah, but here again g is coming up with ways to monetize electricity. So hey, it's something else you can put in your home along with your fan and

your light bulb. Yeah, that's right, that's right. That's another thing is that you know, G had a vested interest in making sure that there were lots of products that

ran on electricity so that you would want it. Uh. They also in nine to know five they established the Electric Bond and Share Company, which was designed to provide financing too smaller companies out there that would so in a way to try and help out other companies that could potentially buy electricity from them, by electricity from them, or create things that they could then you know, these could be companies that that the G might acquire later,

but or things that made electrical equipment that made it necessary for people to buy more electricity. Lots of different reasons. And then eventually this this UM division, this service actually would evolve into Gas Commercial Finance Division. Back in nineteen o six, on Christmas Eve, there was an historic event.

Ernst Frederick Verna Alexanderson. Yeah, that's a thrish Dish. He was an an inventor who created a high frequency alternator which was used in a radio broadcast, the world's first voice radio broadcast, so not a not radio communication that had been around for a little bit. And uh, and some some tests have been done, but this was the

first time there was a radio broadcast made on Christmas Eve. UM, so that's pretty interesting that it was a g E employee who created the high frequency alternator that made that possible. GE built thirty ton gearless electric locomotives for the New York Central Railroad. Uh So, again, still very much in that railroad mode of transportation. I mean we're still talking the earliest parts of the twentieth century, so that's still

the best way to get lots of stuff across large spaces. Well, at the time, they if you coupled two locomotives together, and these were horsepower locomotives each. Uh So if you couple two of them together, they could pull pretty much anything that they could put on, you know, on a train car. They were saying that they could handle the loads that they were putting on them at that point.

So these were substantial machines. The heaviest loads that had been pulled at that by that time were pull double by these things. Uh In nineteen o nine, the Research and Development Lab produced a duct tile tungsten filament which made incandescent bulbs much more efficient. It was William D.

Coolidge helped out with that. William D. Coolidge is the guy responsible and uh so yeah, this this made incandescent bulbs last longer than they had before, and which was good because even back when they were first hitting the scene, they weren't They didn't last terribly long. With a few exceptions. It all depended on what the filament was made out of. And Edison's I believe was made out of a bamboo

if I'm not mistaken, Um, the old bamboo. Uh well, and uh the funny thing about this tungsten filament that Mr Coolidge came up with, it's still basically the one that incandescent bulbs used today use. So um, it's it's proved long lasting. Yes, yes, and g E Is also looked into alternatives two incandescent bulbs, which we will talk about further in but uh. In nineteen ten, they developed the company developed the first electric cooking range. Do you

know what that was called? Yes, well, it was a brand that's still used today for appliances hot Point hot Point nineteen twelve. So in nineteen twelve, a lot of stuff happens. First of all, Coffin steps down as the president of ge UH and E w RICE takes the Helm and uh GE and starts to introduce improvements in vacuum tube design, so not inventing vacuum tubes, but improving upon them. Also was they contributed to the creation of

the very first electrically propelled navy vessel, the U S. S. Jubiter. Yeah, used a seven thousand horsepower horsepower turbine processor and uh was a twenty tho ton collier. Yeah, and you know what happened in nineteen twenty with the Jupiter. It's pretty exciting. So you have the first electrically propelled navy vessel. So that's that's the Jupiter. In nineteen twenty, the Navy decided to refit the Jupiter to to transform it into the U S. S. Langley, and it became the very first

aircraft carrier. So the Jupiter would eventually become the first aircraft carrier. So it's two firsts, the first electrically propelled vessel for the Navy and the first aircraft carrier. Also in nineteen twelve, GE began its plastics department, which just goes to show you they've graduated. Nice thanks, um, Yeah, they they're not going to do a seduced joke that not gonna happen. But they you might say, you know, wow that I didn't really realize that plastics were around.

Well they, I would say, they probably weren't in the way that a lot of us think of plastic. Now, yeah, this was mostly these were mostly used for industrial purposes like wire insulating wires. Yeah, and they were phenomic, which, based on my own personal limited knowledge of plastics, sort of a hard, brittle plastic. Yeah, this isn't multiple plastic

that would come later. So in the EN they developed the hot cathode high vacuum X ray tube, which helped make U make it X rays more efficient and uh and reliable, so that doctors could use this technology in a way that would uh it would it would consume less energy and it was easier to control. Hey, and you know what it used? What's that tungsten? Yeah, of

course it did so a cold cathode, aluminum cathode. So ntour. Well, this is the year where one of those four men I mentioned, Edwin J. Houston or Houston when he passes away in nineteen fourteen. That same year, g E starts to provide electrical components that are used within the locks in the Panama Canal. Thanks President Roosevelt. There we go. Nineteen fifteen, GE develops cal Rod, which is a heat conducting ceramic that also acts as an insulator. Yeah, used

in electric range tops. Sorry, um yeah, one of the uh one again, this is one of the topics that will come up probably a handful of times in this discussion. Um cal Rod is still in use. Um G has been pretty good about finding materials that have multiple uses and just do so well that they you know, they hang around for years. Yeah, yeah, if it ain't broke. Uh.

Nineteen seventeen, they developed the first hermetically sealed refrigerator refrigerator. Yeah, so uh, when we're talking about the icebox, we're starting to speak metaphorically, right, finally, Yeah, because before before that it was literal. Do you actually did have to get a big block of ice and put it in a box to try and keep stuff cold. Meanwhile, dozens of of ice men are hanging out outside Menlo Park and Schenected Eat, shouting and waving their fist and big signs

made out of ice rapidly melting in. They developed the magnetron, which was a vacuum tube that uses magnetic fields to control power output. And you guys have probably heard us talk about magnetrons before because they've been used in a couple of different technologies, one of which was radar. Yes. But then one of the guys who was working on radar with a magnetron noticed something interesting. Oh, yes, the chocolate bar melting in his pocket. Yes, which indicated that

there was something hinky going on. And that led to the discovery of microwaves and their potential use as a heating element. And so yes, magnetrons now are used in not just radar, but also microwaves. I feel like I'm being cooked slowly. This could probably be useful for something. UH. And that same year they also developed a two watt alternator that allowed for trans oceanic radio broadcasts. So now people can talk to each other across the ocean, and

UH and Yale insults at each other directly. Actually, it was used during World War one two to transmit information between UH, the Allied Expeditionary Yeah, Expeditionary Force, and UH in the United States itself from from back and forth during during the war to communicate plans and things. And speaking of World War one, alright, so in nineteen nineteen, this is this is where I'm going to go off in a little bit of a tangent en. Here's a

big mess in World War One. So the United States government decided during World War One that it would be really important to gather together all of the different companies and technologies that had to do with radio because that would be very useful during the war effort. So they essentially commandeered everything. More or less. I am oversimplifying for the purposes of this podcast, but the United States essentially commandeers all these different companies assets that are dealing with

radio technology. When the war is over. Uh, the the United States says, um, well, we don't really want to give all this stuff back to companies that have overseas elements because that could eventually be bad. We need an American company, gosh darned patriotic American company, to take over a radio development. And so they go to several different companies, including g E, and say, form an American company that's

all about radio. So they formed the Radio Corporation of America or r c A, and g E is Uh. The the has controlling interest in our c A, but other companies do to, including Westinghouse and A. T. And T as well as others. Uh So, it's kind of a complicated relationship here, but yes, so G, Yeah, it's complicated. G has controlling interests in our ci A and the very first CEO of our c A is a man named Owen D. Young and he will become important in

a little bit. So moving on, In nine creates a portable X ray machine, so now you can look at people on the go. Yeah. They they put in an X ray tube and the transformer assembly uh in basically was immersed in oil um which enabled this technology to work. But the device only weighed twenty pounds UM and it could be used also for for dental X rays, which is important. Now we still haven't reached the point where we have X ray specs, but that's probably a good thing.

Well that didn't come along until the invention of the comic book ad. Yeah, yeah right there with Charles Atlas. Yeah, no, we you wouldn't want those ionizing radiation staying close to you for a long bad time. Turns out to be a bad thing. Yeah, and then there are the people that you know never mind um so yeah, like wow, look at her skeletal structure. U. Anyway, so one a plane, UH sets an altitude record of hundred feet And the way it does is it uses something called a supercharger,

which was developed by General Electric and UH. Yeah, the guy, the guy I love these stories, a guy named Sanford Moss who who realized that sixteen years old that if you compress UH fuel where if you if you burn fuel and compressed air environment, you could get more energy out of the the Actually exactly, the combustion creates more

energy than it would without the compressed air. What he said, and Uh and he you know, was working for GE and they turned that into a well into a whole line of jet engines, which would happen later, but yeah, huge deal. In nineteen twenty two, Coffin retires from the board. He had already retired as president. Now he had become a member of the board and now was retired. UH

and Rice retires as the president. And that's when O. N. D. Young, the former head of our CIA, becomes the new chairman of the board and a guy named Gerard Swope becomes the new president of g E and Swope and UH and Young together began to really focus on creating UH gadgets for the home appliances for the home. They really started to push g E to make more of those, and and not not to abandon its industrial uh it's

it's industrial efforts as well. It was still making stuff for industry and for companies, victories, that kind of stuff, but that they wanted to have a whole line of appliances. And that's also when uh oh and and Swope, by the way, another thing that's interesting about him, Gerard Swope the president at that point, he was known for really

working to improve labor conditions. He was he was really on the side of employees more often than not, and so he worked to make sure that the uh, the labor conditions within GE were the best they could be. He also worked with labor relations and was very much on their side for um uh negotiations. So Swope was kind of a kind of a popular president really m G while he was there. And they also in nineteen twenty two created a radio station in New York. What

town was that that would be in Schenectady. There you go, and it was w g Y. Yeah, this might not sound very exciting, but it was one of the very first to begin regular broadcasting using a and this is funny in today's in today's thinking a fifteen hundred transmitter which probably would get you a few miles away. Here's your traffic report. We got Charles up in the tree outside the office. Charles is, what's what's going on out there? There's a horse, all right? And moving on to your requests.

So it would get better, yes, yes, eventually you had the Zoo crew in there. So in nineteen race car driver named Peter de Polo wins the Indianapolis five hundred driving a car that also happens to have a G e U supercharger in it, So thanks Mr Moss. Not a little jet engine right there in the car. Well no, but it did the same, had the same effect on It was the same effect, and that it went really fast.

It didn't reacht I hope. So in uh six, Charles Coffin passes away, so he's you know, his passing was another end of an era. At that same time, our c A, the Radio Corporation of America, acquired several other networks and formed something called the National Broadcasting Company or NBC. I feel like i've heard of that, do do do? Okay? Actually I told you before we started that I had a bit of color to add to the r C. A discussion UM found out and and apparently this is

a myth. But but the the musical nature of that is true. The notes that you just sang, which are recognizable to those of us in the United States as uh than the tones that NBC uses on its broadcasts, happened to work out to G E c uh clever. Now, apparently the myth is that that that's for General Electric Corporation. UM. From what I understand, that is just a myth. But if they are in the right position, So if you play GEO, go out to your piano, if you've got one,

play g E C and you will. I want to believe that just as much as I want to believe how is how because it's three letters off from my IM so I think that's probably more more true. It's more true than this less true thing. So it's more true than this. In nineteen seven, G. S W g Y starts sending out the first TV signals to be picked up by a home television and it's in a little town in New York. It's called that's right. So in nineteen nine g E installs this. This excites me

because I'm such a theater geek. Right In N nine g E installs electronic theater lighting controls at the Chicago Civic Opera. Alright, So, as a theater geek, I have to say, this revolutionizes the way the way people can perform theater because before you typically had lighting that was very much stationary because you couldn't really do a whole lot with it, or you couldn't turn lights on and

off easily because you were using sometimes open flames. Um. Switching to electronic lights means that you could turn things off and on very quickly. There was no you know, it wasn't going to fade up or fade down if unless you wanted it to. But it allows you to do some very dramatic staging opportunities that just weren't available before that. So it's really done a lot to change the way live theater works, which is exciting to me and no one else. So we'll move on ninety um.

So that was the very I was gonna sorry, Oh there we go. Uh In g introduced the first washing machine. Did you see a picture of this? Yes? I did. It looks like an oil drum with a home appliance of some sort. On top of it. Yeah. Yeah, well that's the way they used to look. I mean, the thing is that with those old washing machines, you didn't you know, we think of them as being sort of square now, but they also have a brokage totally square. That's because you're such a hep cat. I just wear

clothes once and then I burn them. Um yea. But yeah, these didn't have the holes that and a spin cycle that you know, would drain the water you were, you'd wash it and then you'd take them out of there and you'd bring them yourself. So but they worked. You didn't have to take it down and pound your stuff on rocks down by the river, that's right. Yeah, that

was definitely an improvement. Was also when ge began to provide electrical systems for a building that was going up in New York City, a tall building, a very tall building, the tallest one at that point, the Empire State Building. Yeah, they did a whole lot of stuff with the wiring, their safety switches, switchboards, panel boards, and all sorts of other electrical uh infrastructure that went in the building. And of course, you know, people rushed right in to pick

up spaces and that. Oh wait, no, they didn't, but that's another story. Yeah, we could do a whole podcast just on the Empire State Building. Actually, they're quite a few podcasts. We could do a podcast on our c A. It would be fascinating. Yeah, we can do that. Uh, and we're gonna actually talk a little bit about that in just a second. Anyway, Um show save the G E C for that. So G E starts it's uh,

it's mold Bowl Plastic division within the company. Yeah. Now this is when we start getting into plastics such as we know them now, where you can you can form them into different shapes, and I mean not that you couldn't before, but they're flexible, more flexible, and they start taking the place of other materials in home appliances. So you'd find stuff that fewer things made out of metal and more things made out of plastic from this point forward.

Also in ninety so r c A is formed. In nineteen thirty, the United States holds antitrust hearings against General Electric regarding our CIA. And didn't they weren't they supposed to? Wait? This is where I ran. Wait, right, So the United States nineteen tells GE, Hey, you guys need to make this company. So they do, and then in nineteen thirty US says, hey, you guys have a monopoly on this company we made you make get rid of it. I know, right, that doesn't make a lot of It drives me crazy.

You've got I mean, like you weren't there already? Yeah, I know real Uh this short trip the United States? So yeah, the United States says, all right, we can't let all these different assets go back to the companies they belong to originally, because who knows what could happen. So let's make this one company by telling these other companies to form it. And then comes up to G and says, hey, you can't do that anymore, that thing

we told you to do. Stop doing that. And so G divested itself of the controlling interest to our c A. And uh that's you might think, oh, well that's the end of that story. No, but it's gonna take two podcasts before we get back to it. Um anyway, the uh yeah, this drives me nuts. Oh. Also that same year, there was another company that also had to divest its interest in our ci A, Westinghouse. So you know G and Westinghouse, these competitors both owned interest in our Cia.

Both of them had to divest interest in it so that it would no longer be considered an antitrust issue. All right, And that brings us to nineteen thirty one and the end of our podcast. We decided to end it in thirty one because nineteen thirty one is the year that Thomas Alva Edison passed away, but he lived long enough to see his company become pardoned upon, a powerhouse in its industry and create several industries as well. Yes,

it was definitely an instrumental company at that time. It will only grow to be more so over the following decades. So we are going to conclude our podcast of part one of the g E Story right here. We will pick up in part two in nineteen thirty two, and we will continue on and there will be a part three because this is this is a company that's got a storied past. So join us for our next episode.

And if you guys have any suggestions for episode topics, whether it's a company we should feature, whether it's an interview we should do, or just some other kind of technology you would like to hear about, let us know. You can contact us through email. Our address is text stuff at Discovery dot com, or you can send us a message on face Look or Twitter or handle at both of those is text stuff H. S W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.

Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House stuf Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you