General Electric grew from Edison's companies and ended as three separate firms
General Electric was born in 1892 when J. P. Morgan's bank merged Thomas Edison's electric business with a rival. For more than a century it made nearly everything, from fridges to jet engines, and sat in the Dow Jones index for 122 years. Then, beginning in 2021, it carved itself into three separate companies.
By 1889 Edison had interests scattered across many firms making lamps, dynamos and light fittings. Investors including Henry Villard pushed to combine them, and with financing from Drexel, Morgan and Co they became Edison General Electric. Three years later that company merged with Thomson-Houston, led by Charles Coffin, to form GE, headquartered for years at Schenectady, New York. In 1896 it was among the original 12 members of the new Dow Jones Industrial Average. An early prize was Charles Steinmetz, a mathematical and electrical genius who earned more than 200 patents.
GE's reach became astonishing. Its executive Owen D. Young founded the Radio Corporation of America in 1919, and RCA went on to co-found NBC, until antitrust charges forced GE to let RCA go in 1930. The Monitor Top refrigerator of 1926 was quiet, sealed and frugal with power, and by 1930 GE held over a third of the American fridge market. In 1928 Ernst Alexanderson sent what was billed as the first public television broadcast in the United States to screens of just 1.5 square inches in four executives' homes. GE supplied 300,000 turbosuperchargers for wartime aircraft and was chosen to build the country's first jet engine. Two of its scientists, Irving Langmuir and Ivar Giaever, won Nobel Prizes.
Some ventures misfired. In the 1960s GE was one of eight major computer makers, but its chief Ralph Cordiner doubted the business and in 1958 fired the manager who had won the Bank of America contract for a machine that read magnetic numbers on cheques.
After the late-2000s recession GE sold its appliance and finance arms and later its lighting and locomotive units, and its profits collapsed. The final breakup produced GE HealthCare in 2023 and GE Vernova in energy, while GE Aerospace kept the old name.
Source: General Electric
