All pictures and content on this web site are the property of the Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording / reel2reeltexas.com • Photos of items in our collection are available for sale. We do NOT provide copies of ads, nor photos from other sources! All photo work is billed at studio rates and a deposit is required. © 2021 Theophilus/Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording / reel2reeltexas.com
General Electric Company
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate incorporated in New York State and headquartered in Boston. Until 2021, the company operated through aviation, power, renewable energy, digital industry, weapons manufacturing, locomotives, 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 as the 33rd largest firm in the United States by gross revenue. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th most profitable company, but later very severely under performed the market (by about 75%) as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE—Irving Langmuir (1932) and Ivar Giaever (1973)—have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
On November 9, 2021, the company announced it would divide into three public companies. The new companies will be focused on aviation, health care, and energy (renewable energy, power and digital) respectively. The first spinoff of the health care division is planned for 2023 and to be followed by the spinoff of the energy division in 2024
More history
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, 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, was formed.[
In 1893, General Electric bought the business of Rudolf Eickemeyer in Yonkers, New York, along with all of its patents and designs. One of the employees was Charles Proteus Steinmetz. 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 transformers 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.
In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average, where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously.
In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) into its lighting business. GE established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio. The lighting division has since remained in the same location.
RCA and NBC
Owen D. Young, through GE, founded the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1919, after purchasing the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. He aimed to expand international radio communications. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales. In 1926, RCA cofounded the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which built two radio broadcasting networks. In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations and was ordered to divest itself of RCA.
Wire recorders were used by the U.S Navy during WW II.
During the war, Armour Research Foundation received a contract from the United States Navy to develop a portable sound recorder. The original recorder was modified make it more rugged. Between 1942 and the end of the war, Armour and a licensed manufacturer, General Electric, made perhaps a few thousand of these recorders. They were used for many purposes throughout the war, most notably as a portable field recorder for journalists.
Armour Research Foundation
Carmen Miranda in a 1945 advertisement for a General Electric FM radio in The Saturday Evening Post
In 1927, Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of television broadcast reception at his General Electric Realty Plot 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: 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).[citation needed]
Experimental television station W2XAD evolved into the station WRGB which, along with WGY and WGFM (now WRVE), was owned and operated by General Electric until 1983. The company also owned television stations such as KOA-TV (now KCNC-TV) in Denver and WSIX-TV (later WNGE-TV, now WKRN) 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 and made it into an owned-and-operated station by NBC. It even stayed on until 1995 when it was transferred to a joint venture between CBS and Group W in a swap deal, alongside KUTV in Salt Lake City for longtime CBS O&O in Philadelphia, WCAU-TV.
In December 1985, GE reacquired RCA, primarily for the NBC 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 Thomson SA, which traces its roots to Thomson-Houston, one of the original components of GE.[citation needed] 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 our research, there is no mention of GE reel nor cassette recorder manufacturing. For over 100 years, GE has maintained a business relationship in Japan, beginning with Kyoto’s bamboo filament used in Edison’s lighting bulb in 1879. GE Japan established in 1960. Japan, China, South Korea and other foreign companies manufactured GE's cassette and reel tape recorders.
An aside: My mom Margaret "Peg" Crerar (second from left below) worked in the Cleveland, Ohio GE plant in the early 1940's, both before and after she met and married my Dad.
Third Party Photos
We appreciate all photos sent to our museum. We hope to successfully preserve the sound recording history. If we have not credited a photo, we do not know its origin if it was not taken by the contributor. Please let us know if a photo on our site belongs to you and is not credited. We will be happy to give you credit, or remove it if you so choose.
PLEASE NOTE: NONE OF THE ITEMS PICTURED ON OUR MUSEUM WEB SITE ARE FOR SALE!
