General Electric Company (GE) is an American
multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in
New York state
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...
and headquartered in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
. The company operated in sectors including
healthcare
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
,
aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...
,
power
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
,
renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
,
digital industry,
additive manufacturing
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...
and
venture capital and finance,
but has since divested from several areas, now primarily consisting of the first four segments.
In 2020, GE ranked among the
Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
as the 33rd largest firm in the United States by
gross revenue
In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business.
Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive revenue ...
. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th most profitable company, but later very severely underperformed the market (by about 75%) as its profitability collapsed.
Two employees of GE –
Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir (; January 31, 1881 – August 16, 1957) was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry.
Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 art ...
(1932) and
Ivar Giaever
Ivar Giaever ( no, Giæver, ; born April 5, 1929) is a Norwegian-American engineer and physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson "for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids". G ...
(1973) – have been awarded the
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
.
On November 9, 2021, the company announced it would divide itself into three investment-grade public companies. On July 18, 2022, GE unveiled the brand names of the companies it will create through its planned separation: GE Aerospace, GE HealthCare and GE Vernova. The new companies will be focused on aerospace, healthcare, and energy (renewable energy, power, and digital). The first spin-off of
GE HealthCare
GE HealthCare is a subsidiary of American multinational conglomerate General Electric incorporated in New York and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. As of 2017, it is a manufacturer and distributor of diagnostic imaging agents and radiopharma ...
is planned for the first week of January 2023, to be followed by the spin-off of GE's portfolio of energy businesses which plan to become
GE Vernova
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energy, ...
in 2024. Following these transactions, GE will be an aviation-focused company, renaming itself as
GE Aerospace
GE Aviation, a subsidiary of General Electric, is headquartered in Evendale, Ohio, outside Cincinnati. GE Aviation is among the top aircraft engine suppliers, and offers engines for the majority of commercial aircraft. GE Aviation is part of th ...
, and will be the legal successor of the original GE.
History
Formation
![General Electric Shops, Schenectady, NY, 1896](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/General_Electric_Shops%2C_Schenectady%2C_NY%2C_1896.jpg)
During 1889,
Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These invention ...
(1847–1931) had business interests in many electricity-related companies, including Edison Lamp Company, a lamp manufacturer in
East Newark, New Jersey
East Newark is a borough in the western part of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. It is a suburb of Newark. The borough is the second-smallest municipality by total area in the state.
The Borough of East Newark was established on July ...
;
Edison Machine Works
The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, and other components of the electrical illumination system being built in the 1880s by Thomas A. Edison in New York City.
History
The need for ...
, a manufacturer of
dynamo
file:DynamoElectricMachinesEndViewPartlySection USP284110.png, "Dynamo Electric Machine" (end view, partly section, )
A dynamo is an electrical generator that creates direct current using a commutator (electric), commutator. Dynamos were the f ...
s and large
electric motor
An electric motor is an Electric machine, electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a Electromagneti ...
s in
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...
; Bergmann & Company, a manufacturer of electric
lighting fixtures,
sockets, and other electric lighting devices; and ''Edison Electric Light Company'', the
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
-holding company and the financial arm backed by
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...
(1837–1913) and the
Vanderbilt family
The Vanderbilt family is an American family who gained prominence during the Gilded Age. Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthr ...
for Edison's lighting experiments.
In 1889,
Drexel, Morgan & Co., a company founded by J.P. Morgan and
Anthony J. Drexel
Anthony Joseph Drexel Sr. (September 13, 1826 – June 30, 1893) was an American banker who played a major role in the rise of modern global finance after the American Civil War. As the dominant partner of Drexel & Co. of Philadelphia, he founde ...
, financed Edison's research and helped merge those companies under one corporation to form Edison General Electric Company, which was incorporated in New York on April 24, 1889. The new company also 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
The Edison Illuminating Company was established by Thomas Edison on December 17, 1880, to construct electrical generating stations, initially in New York City. The company was the prototype for other local illuminating companies that were establis ...
, which would later become
Consolidated Edison
Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 b ...
, was not part of the merger.
In 1880, Gerald Waldo Hart formed the American Electric Company of
New Britain, Connecticut
New Britain is a city in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located approximately southwest of Hartford. According to 2020 Census, the population of the city is 74,135.
Among the southernmost of the communities encompassed wit ...
, which merged a few years later with
Thomson-Houston Electric Company
The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was a manufacturing company which was one of the precursors of the General Electric company.
History
The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was formed in 1882 in the United States when a group of Lynn, Massa ...
, led by
Charles Coffin. In 1887, Hart left to become superintendent of the Edison Electric Company of
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...
. General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of
Lynn, Massachusetts
Lynn is the eighth-largest municipality in Massachusetts and the largest city in Essex County. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of the Boston city line at Suffolk Downs, Lynn is part of Greater Boston's urban inner core. Settled by E ...
, with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co.
Both plants continue to operate under the GE banner to this day. The company 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
GE Canada (or General Electric Canada) is the wholly-owned Canadian unit of General Electric, manufacturing various consumer and industrial electrical products all over Canada.
GE Canada was preceded by the company Canadian General Electric (CG ...
, was formed.
In 1893, General Electric bought the business of Rudolf Eickemeyer in
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as enu ...
, along with all of its patents and designs. One of the employees was
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (born Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz, April 9, 1865 – October 26, 1923) was a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer and professor at Union College. He fostered the development of alternati ...
. Only recently arrived in the United States, Steinmetz was already publishing in the field of magnetic hysteresis and had earned worldwide professional recognition.
Led by Steinmetz, Eickemeyer's firm had developed
transformer
A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...
s for use in the
transmission of electrical power among many other mechanical and electrical devices. Steinmetz quickly became known as the engineering wizard in GE's engineering community.
Public company
In 1896, General Electric was one of the
original 12 companies listed on the newly formed
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity inde ...
, where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously.
![Carmen Miranda by General Electric (1945)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Carmen_Miranda_by_General_Electric_%281945%29.jpg)
In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) into its lighting business. GE established its lighting division headquarters at
Nela Park
Nela Park is the headquarters of GE Lighting, a Savant company and is located in East Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Nela Park is the first industrial park in the world being home to most of the lighting breakthroughs of the last century.
The i ...
in
East Cleveland, Ohio
East Cleveland is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and is the first suburb encountered when travelling east from Cleveland. The population was 13,792 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. East Clevela ...
. The lighting division has since remained in the same location.
RCA and NBC
Owen D. Young, through GE, founded the
Radio Corporation of America
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
(RCA) in 1919, after purchasing the
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America
The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (commonly called American Marconi) was incorporated in 1899. It was established as a subsidiary of the British Marconi Company and held the U.S. and Cuban rights to Guglielmo Marconi's radio (then ...
. 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
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
(NBC), 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
Ernst Frederick Werner Alexanderson (January 25, 1878 – May 14, 1975) was a Swedish-American electrical engineer, who was a pioneer in radio and television development. He invented the Alexanderson alternator, an early radio transmitter used ...
of GE made the first demonstration of television broadcast reception at his
General Electric Realty Plot
The General Electric Realty Plot, often referred to locally as the GE Realty Plot, GE Plots or just The Plot, is a residential neighborhood in Schenectady, New York, United States. It is an area of approximately just east of Union College.
Origi ...
home at 1132 Adams Rd, 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
WRGB (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Schenectady, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CW affiliate WCWN (channel 45, also licensed to Sc ...
: the pictures were picked up on 1.5 square inch (9.7 square centimeter) screens in the homes of four GE executives. The sound was broadcast on GE's
WGY (AM)
WGY (810 kHz "NewsRadio WGY") is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Schenectady, New York, and serving the Capital District including the Albany-Schenectady-Troy radio market. It is owned by iHeartMedia, and it airs a News/Talk radio fo ...
.
Experimental television station W2XAD evolved into the station
WRGB
WRGB (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Schenectady, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CW affiliate WCWN (channel 45, also licensed to Sc ...
which, along with WGY and WGFM (now
WRVE
WRVE (99.5 MHz) is a commercial FM radio station licensed in Schenectady and serving the Capital District and Upper Hudson Valley New York. It broadcasts a Hot Adult Contemporary radio format and calls itself "99.5 The River," referring to th ...
), 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 (now
KCNC-TV
KCNC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Denver, Colorado, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios on Lincoln Street (between ...
) in Denver and WSIX-TV (later WNGE-TV, now
WKRN
WKRN-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on Murfreesboro Road (U.S. Routes 41 and 70S) on Nashville's southea ...
) 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
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
and made it into an
owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...
by
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
. It even stayed on until 1995 when it was transferred to a joint venture between
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
and
Group W in a swap deal, alongside
KUTV
KUTV (channel 2) is a television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside independent station KJZZ-TV (channel 14) and St. George–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate K ...
in
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
for longtime
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
O&O in Philadelphia,
WCAU-TV
WCAU (channel 10) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Mount Laurel, New Jerse ...
.
Former General Electric-owned stations
Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and
city of license
In American, Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator.
In North American broa ...
.
Radio stations
Power generation
Led by
Sanford Alexander Moss
Sanford Alexander Moss (August 23, 1872 – November 10, 1946) was an American aviation engineer, who was the first to use a turbocharger on an aircraft engine.
Life and career
Sanford Moss was born 1872 in San Francisco, California to Ernest ...
, GE moved into the new field of aircraft
turbo superchargers. 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
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...
. Superchargers became indispensable in the years immediately prior to World War II. GE supplied 300,000 turbo superchargers 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
A jet engine is a type of reaction engine discharging a fast-moving jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition can include rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and hybrid propulsion, the term ...
that was demonstrated in the United States in 1941. GE was ranked ninth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. Although, their early work with Whittle's designs was later handed to
Allison Engine Company
The Allison Engine Company was an American aircraft engine manufacturer. Shortly after the death of James A. Allison, James Allison in 1929 the company was purchased by the Fisher Body, Fisher brothers. Fisher sold the company to General Motors, ...
. GE
Aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...
then emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, bypassing the British company,
Rolls-Royce plc
Rolls-Royce Holdings plc is a British multinational aerospace and defence company incorporated in February 2011. The company owns Rolls-Royce, a business established in 1904 which today designs, manufactures and distributes power systems for ...
.
Some consumers
boycott
A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...
ed 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 weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
s production.
In 2002, GE acquired the wind power assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings.
Enron Wind
GE Wind Energy is a branch of GE Renewable Energy, a subsidiary of General Electric. The company manufactures and sells wind turbines to the international market. In 2018, GE was the fourth largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world.
History ...
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.
[Fairly, Peter]
The Greening of GE
''IEEE Spectrum
''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. The magazine contains peer-revie ...
'', July 2005. Retrieved: November 6, 2010. It acquired
ScanWind
ScanWind was a Norwegian manufacturing company that produced wind turbines. In 2009 Scanwind was bought by General Electric, and became the base for GE Wind Energy in Norway. The company has its head office in Trondheim and production facilities ...
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
. 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.
Computing
GE was one of the eight major computer companies of the 1960s along with
IBM,
Burroughs,
NCR,
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...
,
Honeywell
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...
,
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
, and
UNIVAC
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company an ...
.
GE had a line of general purpose and special purpose computers, including the
GE 200,
GE 400, and
GE 600 series general purpose computers,
the GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060
real-time
Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...
process control
An industrial process control in continuous production processes is a discipline that uses industrial control systems to achieve a production level of consistency, economy and safety which could not be achieved purely by human manual control. I ...
computers, and the
DATANET-30
The DATANET-30, or DN-30 for short, was a computer manufactured by General Electric designed in 1961-1963 to be used as a communications computer. It was later used as a front-end processor for data communications. It became the first front end c ...
and Datanet 355 message switching computers (DATANET-30 and 355 were also used as front end processors for GE mainframe computers). A Datanet 500 computer was designed, but never sold.
In 1962, GE started developing its
GECOS
General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS, ; originally GECOS, General Electric Comprehensive Operating Supervisor) is a family of operating systems oriented toward the 36-bit GE/Honeywell mainframe computers.
The original version of GCOS wa ...
(later renamed GCOS)
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
, originally for
batch processing
Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...
, but later extended to
time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1
Its emergence a ...
and
transaction processing
Transaction processing is information processing in computer science that is divided into individual, indivisible operations called ''transactions''. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it can never be only partially comple ...
. Versions of GCOS are still in use today. From 1964 to 1969, GE and
Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
(which soon dropped out) joined with
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
to develop the
Multics
Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...
operating system on the
GE 645 The GE 645 mainframe computer was a development of the GE 635 for use in the Multics project. This was the first computer that implemented a configurable hardware protected memory system. The original CTSS was implemented on a modified IBM 7094 wi ...
mainframe computer. The project took longer than expected and was not a major commercial success, but it demonstrated concepts such as
single-level storage,
dynamic linking
In computing, a dynamic linker is the part of an operating system that loads and links the shared libraries needed by an executable when it is executed (at "run time"), by copying the content of libraries from persistent storage to RAM, filling ...
,
hierarchical file system
Hierarchical File System (HFS) is a proprietary file system developed by Apple Inc. for use in computer systems running Mac OS. Originally designed for use on floppy and hard disks, it can also be found on read-only media such as CD-ROMs. HFS i ...
, and
ring-oriented security. Active development of Multics continued until 1985.
GE got into computer manufacturing because in the 1950s they were the largest user of computers outside the
United States federal government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 ...
,
aside from being the first business in the world to own a computer. Its major appliance manufacturing plant "
Appliance Park
GE Appliances is an American home appliance manufacturer based in Louisville, Kentucky. It has been majority owned by Chinese multinational home appliances company Haier since 2016. It is one of the largest appliance companies in the United Stat ...
" was the first non-governmental site to host one. However, in 1970, GE sold its computer division to
Honeywell
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...
, exiting the computer manufacturing industry,
though it retained its timesharing operations for some years afterwards. GE was a major provider of computer time-sharing services, through General Electric Information Services (GEIS, now GXS), offering online computing services that included
GEnie
Jinn ( ar, , ') – also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirit or demon, depending on sources)
– are invisible creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems and later in Islamic mytho ...
.
In 2000, when United Technologies Corp. planned to buy Honeywell, GE made a counter-offer that was approved by Honeywell. On July 3, 2001, the European Union issued a statement that "prohibit the proposed acquisition by General Electric Co. of Honeywell Inc.".
The reasons given were it "would create or strengthen dominant positions on several markets and that the remedies proposed by GE were insufficient to resolve the competition concerns resulting from the proposed acquisition of Honeywell".
On June 27, 2014, GE partnered with collaborative design company Quirky to announce its connected LED bulb called Link. The Link bulb is designed to communicate with smartphones and tablets using a mobile app called Wink (platform), Wink.
Acquisitions and divestments
In December 1985, GE reacquired RCA, primarily for the
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
television network (also parent of Telemundo Communications Group) for $6.28 billion; this merger surpassed the Capital Cities/ABC merger that happened earlier that year as the largest non-oil merger in world business history. The remainder was sold to various companies, including Bertelsmann (Bertelsmann acquired RCA Records) and Technicolor SA, Thomson SA, which traces its roots to Thomson-Houston, one of the original components of GE. Also in 1986, Kidder, Peabody & Co., a U.S.-based securities firm, was sold to GE and following heavy losses was sold to PaineWebber in 1994.
In 2002, Francisco Partners and Norwest Venture Partners acquired a division of GE called GE Information Systems (GEIS). The new company, named GXS (company), GXS, is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. GXS is a provider of business-to-business e-commerce solutions. GE maintains a minority stake in GXS. Also in 2002, GE Wind Energy was formed when GE bought the wind turbine manufacturing assets of Enron Wind after the Enron scandals.
[Murphy, Dennis]
GE completes Enron Wind acquisition; Launches GE Wind Energy
''Desert Sky Wind Farm'', May 10, 2002. Retrieved: May 1, 2010.
In 2004, GE bought 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, the parent of Universal Pictures from Vivendi. Vivendi bought 20% of NBC forming the company NBCUniversal. GE then owned 80% of NBCUniversal and Vivendi owned 20%. In 2004, GE completed the Corporate spin-off, spin-off of most of its mortgage loan, mortgage and life insurance assets into an independent company, Genworth Financial, based in Richmond, Virginia.
Genpact formerly known as GE Capital International Services (GECIS) was established by GE in late 1997 as its captive India-based Business process outsourcing, BPO. GE sold 60% stake in Genpact to General Atlantic and Oak Hill Capital Partners in 2005 and hived off Genpact into an independent business. GE is still a major client to Genpact today, for services in customer service, finance, information technology, and analytics.
In May 2007, GE acquired Smiths Aerospace for $4.8 billion. Also in 2007, GE Oil & Gas acquired Vetco Gray for $1.9 billion, followed by the acquisition of Hydril Pressure & Control in 2008 for $1.1 billion.
GE Plastics was sold in 2008 to SABIC (Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation). In May 2008, GE announced it was exploring options for divesting the bulk of its consumer and industrial business.
On December 3, 2009, it was announced that NBCUniversal would become a joint venture between GE and cable television operator Comcast. Comcast would hold a controlling interest in the company, while GE would retain a 49% stake and would buy out shares owned by Vivendi.
Vivendi would sell its 20% stake in NBCUniversal to GE for US$5.8 billion. Vivendi would sell 7.66% of NBCUniversal to GE for US$2 billion if the GE/Comcast deal was not completed by September 2010 and then sell the remaining 12.34% stake of NBCUniversal to GE for US$3.8 billion when the deal was completed or to the public via an Initial public offering, IPO if the deal was not completed.
On March 1, 2010, GE announced plans to sell its 20.85% stake in Turkey-based Garanti Bank. In August 2010, GE Healthcare signed a strategic partnership to bring cardiovascular Computed Tomography (CT) technology from start-up Arineta Ltd. of Israel to the hospital market. In October 2010, GE acquired gas engines manufacturer Dresser Industries in a $3 billion deal and also bought a $1.6 billion portfolio of retail credit cards from Citigroup Inc.
On October 14, 2010, GE announced the acquisition of data migration & SCADA simulation specialists Opal Software.
In December 2010, for the second time that year (after the Dresser acquisition), GE bought the oil sector company Wellstream, an oil pipe maker, for 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion).
In March 2011, GE announced that it had completed the acquisition of privately held Lineage Power Holdings from The Gores Group. In April 2011, GE announced it had completed its purchase of John Wood plc's Well Support Division for $2.8 billion.
In 2011, GE Capital sold its $2 billion Mexican assets to Banco Santander, Santander for $162 million and exited the business in Mexico. Santander additionally assumed the portfolio debts of GE Capital in the country. Following this, GE Capital focused in its core business and shed its non-core assets.
In June 2012, CEO and President of GE Jeff Immelt said that the company would invest Indian rupee sign, ₹3 billion to accelerate its businesses in Karnataka. In October 2012, GE acquired $7 billion worth of bank deposits from MetLife, MetLife Inc.
On March 19, 2013, Comcast bought GE's shares in NBCU for $16.7 billion, ending the company's longtime stake in television and film media.
In April 2013, GE acquired oilfield pump maker Lufkin Industries for $2.98 billion.
In April 2014, it was announced that GE was in talks to acquire the global power division of French engineering group Alstom for a figure of around $13 billion. A rival joint bid was submitted in June 2014 by Siemens and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) with Siemens seeking to acquire Alstom's gas turbine business for €3.9 billion, and MHI proposing a joint venture in steam turbines, plus a €3.1 billion cash investment. In June 2014 a formal offer from GE worth $17 billion was agreed by the Alstom board. Part of the transaction involved the French government taking a 20% stake in Alstom to help secure France's energy and transport interests and French jobs. A rival offer from Siemens-Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was rejected. The acquisition was expected to be completed in 2015.
In October 2014, GE announced it was considering the sale of its Poland, Polish banking business Bank BPH.
Later in 2014, General Electric announced plans to open its global operations center in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Global Operations Center opened in October 2016 as home to GE's multifunctional shared services organization. It supports the company's finance/accounting, human resources, information technology, supply chain, legal and commercial operations, and is one of GE's four multifunctional shared services centers worldwide in Pudong, China; Budapest, Hungary; and Monterrey, Mexico.
In April 2015, GE announced its intention to sell off its property portfolio, worth $26.5 billion, to Wells Fargo and The Blackstone Group. It was announced in April 2015 that GE would sell most of its finance unit and return around $90 billion to shareholders as the firm looked to trim down on its holdings and rid itself of its image of a "hybrid" company, working in both banking and manufacturing. In August 2015, GE Capital agreed to sell its Healthcare Financial Services business to Capital One for US$9 billion. The transaction involved US$8.5 billion of loans made to a wide array of sectors including senior housing, hospitals, medical offices, outpatient services, pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Also in August 2015, GE Capital agreed to sell GE Capital Bank's on-line deposit platform to Goldman Sachs. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the sale included US$8 billion of on-line deposits and another US$8 billion of brokered certificates of deposit. The sale was part of GE's strategic plan to exit the U.S. banking sector and to free itself from tightening banking regulations. GE also aimed to shed its status as a "systematically important financial institution".
In September 2015, GE Capital agreed to sell its transportation-finance unit to Canada's Bank of Montreal. The unit sold had US$8.7 billion (CA$11.5 billion) of assets, 600 employees and 15 offices in the U.S. and Canada. Exact terms of the sale were not disclosed, but the final price would be based on the value of the assets at closing, plus a premium according to the parties.
In October 2015, activist investor Nelson Peltz's fund Trian bought a $2.5 billion stake in the company.
In January 2016, Haier acquired GE's appliance division for $5.4 billion. In October 2016, GE Renewable Energy agreed to pay €1.5 billion to Doughty Hanson & Co for LM Wind Power during 2017.
At the end of October 2016, it was announced that GE was under negotiations for a deal valued at about $30 billion to combine GE Oil & Gas with Baker Hughes. The transaction would create a publicly traded entity controlled by GE. It was announced that GE Oil & Gas would sell off its water treatment business, GE Water & Process Technologies, as part of its divestment agreement with Baker Hughes. The deal was cleared by the EU in May 2017, and by the United States Department of Justice in June 2017. The merger agreement was approved by shareholders at the end of June 2017. On July 3, 2017, the transaction was completed and Baker Hughes became a GE company and was renamed Baker Hughes, a GE Company (BHGE). In November 2018, GE reduced its stake in Baker Hughes to 50.4%. On October 18, 2019, GE reduced its stake to 36.8% and the company was renamed back to Baker Hughes.
In May 2017, GE had signed $15 billion of business deals with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is one of GE's largest customers. In September 2017, GE announced the sale of its Industrial Solutions Business to ABB. The deal closed on June 30, 2018.
Fraud allegations and notice of possible SEC civil action
On August 15, 2019, Harry Markopolos, a financial fraud investigator known for his discovery of a Ponzi Scheme run by Bernard Madoff, accused General Electric of being a "bigger fraud than Enron", alleging $38 billion in accounting fraud. GE denied wrongdoing.
On October 6, 2020, General Electric reported it received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission stating the SEC may take civil action for possible violations of securities laws.
Insufficient reserves for long-term care policies
It is alleged that GE is "hiding" (i.e. under-reserved) $29 billion in losses related to its long-term care business.
According to an August 2019 Fitch Ratings report, there are concerns that GE has not set aside enough money to cover its long-term care liabilities.
In 2018, a lawsuit (the Bezio case) was filed in New York state court on behalf of participants in GE's 401(k) plan and shareowners alleging violations of Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 based on alleged misstatements and omissions related to insurance reserves and performance of GE's business segments.
The Kansas Insurance Department (KID) is requiring General Electric to make $14.5 billion of capital contributions for its insurance contracts during the 7-year period ending in 2024.
GE reported the total liability related to its insurance contracts increased significantly from 2016 to 2019:
:December 31, 2016 $26.1 billion
:December 31, 2017 $38.6 billion
:December 31, 2018 $35.6 billion
:December 31, 2019 $39.6 billion
In 2018, GE announced the issuance of the new standard by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) regarding Financial Services - Insurance (Topic 944) will materially affect its financial statements. Mr. Markopolos estimated there will be a $US 10.5 billion charge when the new accounting standard is adopted in the first quarter of 2021.
Anticipated $8 billion loss upon disposition of Baker Hughes
In 2017, GE acquired a 62.5% interest in Baker Hughes (BHGE) when it combined its oil & gas business with Baker Hughes Incorporated.
In 2018, GE reduced its interest to 50.4%, resulting in the realization of a $2.1 billion loss. GE is planning to divest its remaining interest and has warned that the divestment will result in an additional loss of $8.4 billion (assuming a BHGE share price of $23.57 per share). In response to the fraud allegations, GE noted the amount of the loss would be $7.4 billion if the divestment occurred on July 26, 2019. Mr. Markopolos noted that BHGE is an asset available for sale and therefore mark-to-market accounting is required.
Markopolos noted GE's current ratio was only 0.67.
He expressed concerns that GE may file for bankruptcy if there is a recession.
Other
In 2018, the GE Pension Plan reported losses of US$3.3 billion on plan assets.
In 2018, General Electric changed the discount rate used to calculate the actuarial liabilities of its pension plans. The rate was increased from 3.64% to 4.34%.
Consequently, the reported liability for the underfunded pension plans decreased by $7 billion year-over-year, from $34.2 billion in 2017 to $27.2 billion in 2018.
In October 2018, General Electric announced it would "freeze pensions" for about 20,000 salaried U.S. employees. The employees will be moved to a defined-contribution retirement plan in 2021.
On March 30, 2020, General Electric factory workers protested to convert jet engine factories to make ventilators during the COVID-19 crisis.
In June 2020, GE made an agreement to sell its Lighting business to Savant Systems, Inc., an industry leader in the professional smart home space. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
In November 2020, General Electric warned it would be cutting jobs waiting for a recovery due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Financial performance
Dividends
General Electric was a longtime "dividend aristocrat" (a company with a long history of maintaining dividend payments to shareholders). Until 2017, the company had never cut dividends for 119 years before a 50% dividend reduction from 24 cents per share to 12 cents per share. In 2018, GE further reduced its quarterly dividend from 12 cents to 1 cent per share.
Stock
As a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, GE stock was one of the 30 components of the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity inde ...
from 1907 to 2018, the longest continuous presence of any company on the index, and during this time the only company which was part of the original Dow Jones Industrial Index created in 1896.
In August 2000, the company had a market capitalization of $601 billion, and was the most valuable company in the world. On June 26, 2018, the stock was removed from the index and replaced with Walgreens Boots Alliance. In the years leading to its removal, GE was the worst performing stock in the Dow, falling more than 55 percent year on year and more than 25 percent year to date. The company continued to lose value after being removed from the index.
File:Linear GE Stock Price Graph 1962-2013.png, Linear GE stock price graph 1962–2013
File:GE Trading Volume Graph.png, GE trading volume graph
Bribery
In July 2010, General Electric was willing to pay $23.4 million to settle an SEC complaint, as GE bribed Iraqi government officials to win contracts under the U.N. oil-for-food program.
Corporate affairs
![GeneralElectricSign](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/GeneralElectricSign.jpg)
In 1959, General Electric was accused of promoting the largest illegal cartel in the United States since the adoption of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) in order to maintain artificially high prices. In total, 29 companies and 45 executives would be convicted. Subsequent parliamentary inquiries revealed that "white-collar crime" was by far the most costly form of crime for the United States' finances.
GE is a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
However its main offices are located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at Rockefeller Center in New York City, known now as the Comcast Building. It was formerly known as the GE Building for the prominent GE logo on the roof;
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
's headquarters and main studios are also located in the building. Through its RCA subsidiary, it has been associated with the center since its construction in the 1930s. GE moved its corporate headquarters from the GE Building on Lexington Avenue to Fairfield, Connecticut in 1974. In 2016, GE announced a move to the South Boston Waterfront neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, partly as a result of an incentive package provide by state and city governments. The first group of workers arrived in the summer of 2016, and the full move will be completed by 2018. Due to poor financial performance and corporate downsizing, GE sold the land it planned to build its new headquarters building on, instead choosing to occupy neighboring leased buildings.
GE's tax return is the largest return filed in the United States; the 2005 return was approximately 24,000 pages when printed out, and 237 megabytes when submitted electronically. As of 2011, the company spent more on U.S. lobbying than any other company.
In 2005, GE launched its "''Ecomagination''" initiative in an attempt to position itself as a "green" company.
GE is one of the biggest players in the wind power industry and is developing environment-friendly products such as hybrid locomotives, desalination and water reuse solutions, and photovoltaic cells. The company "plans to build the largest solar-panel-making factory in the U.S.",
[ and has set goals for its subsidiaries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.
On May 21, 2007, GE announced it would sell its GE Plastics division to petrochemicals manufacturer SABIC for net proceeds of $11.6 billion. The transaction took place on August 31, 2007, and the company name changed to SABIC Innovative Plastics, with Brian Gladden as CEO.
In February 2017, GE announced that the company intends to close the Gender pay gap, gender gap by promising to hire and place 20,000 women in technical roles by 2020. The company is also seeking to have a 50:50 male to female Gender equality, gender representation in all entry-level technical programs.
In October 2017, GE announced they would be closing research and development centers in Shanghai, Munich and Rio de Janeiro. The company spent $5 billion on R&D in the last year.
On February 25, 2019, GE sold its diesel locomotive business to Wabtec.
]
CEO
, John L. Flannery was replaced by H. Lawrence Culp Jr. as chairman and CEO in a unanimous vote of the GE Board of Directors.
* Charles A. Coffin (1913–1922)
* Owen D. Young (1922–1939, 1942–1945)
* Philip D. Reed (1940–1942, 1945–1958)
* Ralph J. Cordiner (1958–1963)
* Gerald L. Phillippe (1963–1972)
* Fred J. Borch (1967–1972)
* Reginald H. Jones (1972–1981)
* Jack Welch (1981–2001)
* Jeff Immelt (2001–2017)
* John L. Flannery (2017–2018)
* H. Lawrence Culp Jr. (2018–present)
Corporate recognition and rankings
In 2011, ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' ranked GE the sixth-largest firm in the U.S., and the 14th-most profitable. Other rankings for 2011–2012 include the following:
* #18 company for leaders (''Fortune'')
* #82 green company (''Newsweek'')
* #91 most admired company (''Fortune'')
* #19 most innovative company (''Fast Company (magazine), Fast Company'').
In 2012, GE's brand was valued at $28.8 billion. CEO Jeff Immelt had a set of changes in the presentation of the brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE.
Tom Geismar later stated that looking back at the logos of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, one can clearly judge that they are old-fashioned. Chermayeff & Geismar, along with colleagues Bill Brown and Ivan Chermaev, created the modern 1980 logo. They, in turn, argued that even now the old logos look out of date, earlier they were good. The changes included a new corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE logo, a new customized font (GE Inspira) and a new slogan, "Imagination at work", composed by David Lucas, to replace the slogan "We Bring Good Things to Life" used since 1979. The standard requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual "white space" to documents and advertising. The changes were designed by Wolff Olins and are used on GE's marketing, literature, and website. In 2014, a second typeface family was introduced: GE Sans and Serif by Bold Monday created under art direction by Wolff Olins.
, GE had appeared on the Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
list for 22 years and held the 11th rank. GE was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity inde ...
on June 28, 2018, after the value had dropped below 1% of the index's weight.
Businesses
GE's primary business divisions are:
* GE Additive
* GE Aviation
* GE Capital
* GE Digital
* GE Healthcare
* GE Power
* GE Renewable Energy
* GE Research
Through these businesses, GE participates in markets that include the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity (e.g. Nuclear reactor technology, nuclear, gas and solar), industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, aircraft jet engines, and aviation services. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services. It has a presence in over 100 countries.
General Imaging manufacturers GE digital cameras.
Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT Corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc.) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse Electric (1886), Westinghouse, Tyco International, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE's success.
GE is planning to set up a silicon carbide chip packaging R&D center in coalition with SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York. The project will create 470 jobs with the potential to grow to 820 jobs within 10 years.
On September 14, 2015, GE announced the creation of a new unit: GE Digital, which will bring together its software and IT capabilities. The new business unit will be headed by Bill Ruh, who joined GE in 2011 from Cisco Systems and has since worked on GE's software efforts.
Former divisions
GE Industrial was a division providing appliances, lighting and industrial products; factory automation systems; plastics, silicones and quartz products; security and sensors technology, and equipment financing, management and operating services. As of 2007 it had 70,000 employees generating $17.7 billion in revenue. After some major realignments in late 2007, GE Industrial was organized in two main sub businesses:
* GE Consumer & Industrial
** GE Appliances, Appliances
** Electrical Distribution
** GE Lighting, Lighting
* GE Enterprise Solutions
** Digital Energy
** GE Fanuc Automation, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms
** GE Security, Security
** GE Sensing, Sensing & Inspection Technologies
The former GE Plastics division was sold in August 2007 and is now SABIC (Saudia), SABIC Innovative Plastics.
On May 4, 2008, it was announced that GE would auction off its appliances business for an expected sale of $5–8 billion. However, this plan fell through as a result of the recession.
The former GE Home & Business Solutions, GE Appliances and Lighting segment was dissolved in 2014 when GE's GE Appliances, appliance division was attempted to be sold to Electrolux for $5.4 billion, but eventually sold it to Haier in June 2016 due to antitrust filing against Electrolux. GE Lighting (consumer lighting) and the newly created Current (company), Current, powered by GE, which deals in commercial LED, solar, EV, and energy storage, became stand-alone businesses within the company, until the sale of the latter to American Industrial Partners in April 2019.
The former GE Transportation division merged with Wabtec on February 25, 2019, leaving GE with a 24.9% holding in Wabtec.
On July 1, 2020, GE Lighting was acquired by Savant Systems and remains headquartered at Nela Park
Nela Park is the headquarters of GE Lighting, a Savant company and is located in East Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Nela Park is the first industrial park in the world being home to most of the lighting breakthroughs of the last century.
The i ...
in East Cleveland, Ohio
East Cleveland is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and is the first suburb encountered when travelling east from Cleveland. The population was 13,792 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. East Clevela ...
.
Environmental record
Carbon footprint
General Electric Company reported Total carbon footprint, CO2e emissions (Direct + Indirect) for the twelve months ending 31 December 2020 at 2,080 Kt (-310 /-13% y-o-y).[Alt URL]
There has been a consistent declining trend in reported emissions since 2016.
Pollution
Some of GE's activities have given rise to large-scale air pollution, air and water pollution. Based on data from 2000, researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute listed the corporation as the fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States (behind only DuPont (1802–2017), E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., U.S. Steel, United States Steel Corp., and ConocoPhillips), with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 tons) of toxic chemicals released into the air. GE has also been implicated in the creation of toxic waste. According to United States Environmental Protection Agency, EPA documents, only the United States Government, Honeywell
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...
, and Chevron Corporation are responsible for producing more Superfund toxic waste sites.
In 1983, New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to compel GE to pay for the clean-up of what was claimed to be more than 100,000 tons of chemicals dumped from their plant in Waterford, New York. In 1999, the company agreed to pay a $250 million settlement in connection with claims it polluted the Housatonic River (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) and other sites with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances.
In 2003, acting on concerns that the plan proposed by GE did not "provide for adequate protection of public health and the environment", the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a unilateral administrative order for the company to "address cleanup at the GE site" in Rome, Georgia, also contaminated with PCBs.
The nuclear reactors involved in the 2011 crisis at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Fukushima I in Japan were GE designs, and the architectural designs were done by Ebasco, formerly owned by GE. Concerns over the design and safety of these reactors were raised as early as 1972, but tsunami danger was not discussed at that time. , the same model nuclear power reactors designed by GE are operating in the US; however, as of May 31, 2019, the controversial Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, has been shut down and is in the process of decommission.
Pollution of the Hudson River
GE heavily contaminated the Hudson River with Polychlorinated biphenyl, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) between 1947 and 1977. This pollution caused a range of harmful effects to wildlife and people who eat fish from the river or drink the water. In response to the contamination, activists protested in various ways. Musician Pete Seeger founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and the Clearwater Festival to draw attention to the problem. In 1983, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared a 200-mile (320 km) stretch of the river, from Hudson Falls to New York City, to be a Superfund site requiring cleanup. This Superfund site is considered to be one of the largest in the nation. Other sources of pollution, including mercury contamination and sewage dumping, have also contributed to problems in the Hudson River watershed.
Pollution of the Housatonic River
From until 1977, GE polluted the Housatonic River with PCB discharges from its plant at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. EPA designated the Pittsfield plant and several miles of the Housatonic to be a Superfund site in 1997, and ordered GE to remediate the site. Aroclor 1254 and Aroclor 1260, made by Monsanto, was the primary contaminant of the pollution. The highest concentrations of PCBs in the Housatonic River are found in Woods Pond in Lenox, Massachusetts, just south of Pittsfield, where they have been measured up to 110 mg/kg in the sediment.[ About 50% of all the PCBs currently in the river are estimated to be retained in the sediment behind Woods Pond dam. This is estimated to be about of PCBs.][ Former filled oxbows are also polluted.] Waterfowl and fish who live in and around the river contain significant levels of PCBs and can present health risks if consumed.
Social responsibility
Environmental initiatives
On June 6, 2011, GE announced that it has licensed solar thermal technology from California-based eSolar for use in power plants that use both solar and natural gas.
On May 26, 2011, GE unveiled its EV Solar Carport, a carport that incorporates solar panels on its roof, with electric vehicle charging stations under its cover.
In May 2005, GE announced the launch of a program called "Ecomagination", intended, in the words of CEO Jeff Immelt, "to develop tomorrow's solutions such as solar energy, hybrid locomotives, fuel cells, lower-emission aircraft engines, lighter and stronger durable materials, efficient lighting, and water purification technology". The announcement prompted an op-ed piece in ''The New York Times'' to observe that, "while General Electric's increased emphasis on clean technology will probably result in improved products and benefit its bottom line, Mr. Immelt's credibility as a spokesman on national environmental policy is fatally flawed because of his company's intransigence in cleaning up its own toxic legacy."
GE has said that it will invest $1.4 billion in clean technology research and development in 2008 as part of its Ecomagination initiative. As of October 2008, the scheme had resulted in 70 green products being brought to market, ranging from halogen lamps to biogas engines. In 2007, GE raised the annual revenue target for its Ecomagination initiative from $20 billion in 2010 to $25 billion following positive market response to its new product lines. In 2010, GE continued to raise its investment by adding $10 billion into Ecomagination over the next five years.
GE Energy's renewable energy business has expanded greatly, to keep up with growing U.S. and global demand for clean energy. Since entering the renewable energy industry in 2002, GE has invested more than $850 million in renewable energy commercialization. In August 2008, it acquired Kelman Ltd, a Northern Ireland-based company specializing in advanced monitoring and diagnostics technologies for transformers used in renewable energy generation and announced an expansion of its business in Northern Ireland in May 2010. In 2009, GE's renewable energy initiatives, which include solar power, wind power and GE Jenbacher gas engines using renewable and non-renewable methane-based gases, employ more than 4,900 people globally and have created more than 10,000 supporting jobs.
GE Energy and Orion New Zealand (Orion) have announced the implementation of the first phase of a GE network management system to help improve power reliability for customers. GE's ENMAC Distribution Management System is the foundation of Orion's initiative. The system of smart grid technologies will significantly improve the network company's ability to manage big network emergencies and help it to restore power faster when outages occur.
In June 2018, GE Volunteers, an internal group of GE Employees, along with Malaysian Nature Society, transplanted more than 270 plants from the Taman Tugu forest reserve so that they may be replanted in the forest trail which is under construction.
Educational initiatives
GE Healthcare is collaborating with The Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Medical University of South Carolina to offer an integrated radiology curriculum during their respective MD Programs led by investigators of the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in micro-gravity study. GE has donated over one million dollars of Logiq E Ultrasound equipment to these two institutions.
Marketing initiatives
Between September 2011 and April 2013, GE ran a content marketing campaign dedicated to telling the stories of "innovators—people who are reshaping the world through act or invention". The initiative included 30 3-minute films from leading documentary film directors (Albert and David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Jessica Yu, Leslie Iwerks, Steve James (producer), Steve James, Alex Gibney, Lixin Fan, Gary Hustwit and others), and a user-generated competition that received over 600 submissions, out of which 20 finalists were chosen.
''Short Films, Big Ideas'' was launched at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival in partnership with Morgan Spurlock, cinelan. Stories included breakthroughs in water treatment, Slingshot (water vapor distillation system), cancer research, energy production, pain management and food access. Each of the 30 films received world premiere screenings at a major international film festival, including the Sundance Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival. The winning amateur director film, ''The Cyborg Foundation'', was awarded a prize at the 2013 at Sundance Film Festival. According to GE, the campaign garnered more than 1.5 billion total media impressions, 14 million online views, and was seen in 156 countries.
In January 2017, GE signed an estimated $7 million deal with the Boston Celtics to have its corporate logo put on the National Basketball Association, NBA team's jersey.
Charity
On March 3, 2022, GE published an international memo pledging to donate $4.5 million to Ukraine amid 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian invasion. According to the memo, $4 million will be used for medical equipment, $400,000 for emergency cash for refugees and $100,000 will go to Airlink, a NGO that helps communities in crisis.
Political affiliation
In the 1950s, GE sponsored Ronald Reagan's General Electric Theater, TV career and launched him on the lecture circuit. GE has also designed social programs, supported civil rights organizations, and funds minority education programs.
Notable appearances in media
In the early 1950s, Kurt Vonnegut was a writer for GE. A number of his novels and stories (notably ''Cat's Cradle'' and ''Player Piano (novel), Player Piano'') refer to the fictional city of Ilium (Kurt Vonnegut), Ilium, which appears to be loosely based on Schenectady, New York. The Ilium Works is the setting for the short story "Deer in the Works".
In 1981, GE won a Clio award for its :30 Soft White Light Bulbs commercial, We Bring Good Things to Life. The slogan "We Bring Good Things to Life" was created by Phil Dusenberry at the ad agency BBDO.
GE was the primary focus of a 1991 short subject Academy Award-winning documentary, ''Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment'', that juxtaposed GE's "We Bring Good Things To Life" commercials with the true stories of workers and neighbors whose lives have been affected by the company's activities involving nuclear weapons.
In 2013, GE received a National Jefferson Awards for Public Service, Jefferson Award for Outstanding Service by a Major Corporation.Jefferson Awards Announces Strategic Alliance with the NFL Player Engagement, Charles Fazzino and IvyConnect, While Celebrating 41 Years of Honoring Service to Others
. Prweb.com. Retrieved on August 16, 2013.
See also
* GE Technology Infrastructure
* Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
* List of assets owned by General Electric
* Phoebus cartel
* Top 100 US Federal Contractors
References
Further reading
* Carlson, W. Bernard. ''Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870–1900'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
* Woodbury, David O. ''Elihu Thomson, Beloved Scientist'' (Boston: Museum of Science, 1944)
* Haney, John L. ''The Elihu Thomson Collection'' American Philosophical Society Yearbook 1944.
* Hammond, John W. ''Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric'', published 1941, 436 pages.
* Mill, John M. ''Men and Volts at War: The Story of General Electric in World War II'', published 1947.
* Irmer, Thomas. ''Gerard Swope.'' In Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 4, edited by Jeffrey Fear. German Historical Institute.
External links
*
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