General Electric is somewhat reminiscent of modern Internet startups. The company did not operate in existing markets, but created new industries: sound recording, electricity, lighting and electrical appliances. The huge colossus of the GE Corporation is the brainchild of the famous American inventor Thomas Edison. But his main achievement can be called the creation of a laboratory for commercial research, on the basis of which modern R&D centers arose.

Today we’ll talk about the “bright side” of the company, and in the next article we’ll talk about how General Electric created nuclear bombs, for which it was subjected to public censure so much that it curtailed divisions related to making a profit in this area.

General Electric stand at the Pan American Exhibition, 1901.

Thomas Alva Edison

America's greatest inventor was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, the son of a merchant and a teacher. The Huron River flowed near the city, and little Thomas, already as a child, showed an interest in water mills and other structures, in mechanics and biology. At the age of five, he tried to hatch goose and chicken eggs, having learned that chickens hatch due to the warmth of the bird. At school, teachers considered him limited, so he was home-schooled. He read books avidly at the Port Huron People's Library and did all the experiments in Richard Greene Parker's Natural and Experimental Philosophy.

Thomas started working early - first he helped his mother sell vegetables and fruits, and then got a job as a newspaperman on the Port Huron - Detroit railway line, where he received up to $10 a month, which was barely enough to live on. He looked for various ways to increase newspaper sales, and one of them was a request to announce at all stations on the line in 1862 the defeat of the commander-in-chief of the northern army. As a result, at each station passengers wanted to find out details about this news - this is how the enterprising Edison made money. Edison set up a laboratory in one of the baggage cars. Later, his first laboratory burned down due to experiments with phosphorus. Partial hearing loss may also be associated with this incident. Of course, the cause could have been complications from scarlet fever, since antibiotics did not exist in the 19th century. But Edison himself said that he became deaf from a blow to the ear from a conductor after an explosion in this laboratory.

Since 1863, Edison worked as a telegraph operator. While working the night shift, he slept thanks to process automation. This cost him his job: at one point, two trains almost collided because of it. Edison went to work as a day shift telegraph operator in Fort Wayne and then took a job with Western Union. At that time, he was simultaneously developing an “electric voting machine” - a prototype of modern electronic democracy of the 19th century - and a device for automatically recording stock exchange rates.

An improved version of the system for telegraphing exchange bulletins about the price of gold and shares by using a stock ticker was purchased by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company for 40 thousand dollars. With this money, Edison founded Pop, Edison and Company and purchased equipment to make stock tickers. Within a year, he would improve the telegraph, increasing the speed from 40-50 to 200 words per minute, the typewriter, solve the problem of a paired quadruplex for telegraphy, and open two new workshops.

But Edison needed more than just a workshop. He needed a real R&D center, which he opened in Menlo Park.

The Wizard of Menlo Park

In 1876, construction of a two-story laboratory in Menlo Park in New Jersey was completed, on which Edison spent $2.5 thousand. It is difficult to comprehend the amounts of the century before last, but today it is about $60 thousand. Since 1954, this town has been called Edison in honor of the inventor, and a museum is located in a copy of his laboratory building.

Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, 1878

Edison was completely absorbed in his work. So much so that after the wedding and the birth of two children, he constantly remained in his laboratory, and to protect the house he bought a Newfoundland and two smaller dogs. To protect his property, his wife had to sleep in a three-story house with a revolver under her pillow.

Thomas Edison initially wanted to put inventions into production. He promised to make "small inventions every 10 days and big things every six months or so" in his new laboratory. R&D centers in the USA and other countries now operate using this model.

First floor of the laboratory, 1878

In a letter to Western Union President William Orton, Edison described his laboratory:

“The building is 25x100 feet, two floors filled with almost all the equipment for scientific research. And I have a machine shop with a five horsepower engine. The equipment is the best. I hired three workers, two of whom have been with me for five years and have a lot of experience. I also have two assistants who have been with me for five and seven years, both highly qualified employees.”

Second floor of the laboratory, 1878

The letter went to Western Union - Edison needed money. About $100 a week was spent on coal kerosene and employee salaries alone. Edison promised to give the company "every invention that I make during the period of financing that will be applicable to commercial telegraphy." Western Union agreed to cover the cost of patents and pay royalties for successful inventions, including the telephone.

Second floor of the Edison Museum. Notice the organ on the far wall. Photo: Andrew Ballet

The first sound recording device

What made Thomas Edison the “Wizard of Menlo Park” was the invention of the phonograph.

In August 1877, Edison recorded a line from the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on foil, and the phonograph successfully reproduced the words. Edison commercialized the invention by showing it to people and then sold the rights to produce the phonograph for $10,000.

Thomas Edison and the phonograph

“Once, when I was still working on improving the telephone, I somehow sang over the diaphragm of the telephone, to which a steel needle was attached. Thanks to the vibration of the record, the needle pricked my finger, and this made me think. If it were possible to record these vibrations of the needle, and then move the needle again over this recording, why wouldn’t the record speak,” said Edison.

The brass roller of the phonograph was wrapped in thin tin foil, along which the sharp end of the needle squeezed out sound waves. As the recording roller rotates, the needle and membrane vibrate and produce sound. Later, Edison began using wax instead of foil. One of the first recordings of his voice with a song about Mary and the lamb has survived to this day.

Phonograph advertisement, 1901

Edison envisioned several uses for the phonograph, including audio books for the blind, audio textbooks, and recordings of music and speeches of great people. In Russia, one of the first users of the invention was Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. A recording of his voice also came to us thanks to Edison's phonograph.

One version of the phonograph

In 1903, Edison founded one of the first record labels, Edison Records. Instead of wax cylinders, by that time Blue Amberol cylinders and Edison's flat Diamond Discs had begun to be used.

Amberola

At the same time, the gramophone produced by Emil Berliner was distinguished by the ease of replicating records and initially louder sound. Therefore, by 1929, the phonograph and amberol were practically forced out of the market, and Edison Records closed. But in 1878, proceeds from Edison's Talking Phonograph and funding from Western Union allowed the company to increase its workforce to 25, including experimenters, a watchman, a personal secretary, and machinists. Edison founds Edison Electric Light.

Edison Electric Light

In 1878, Thomas Edison began working on an electric lighting system. He tried to find a replacement for gas and oil lamps and candles, which at that time were the main sources of lighting in homes. Before Edison, they tried to use electric current for lighting, but no one was able to achieve long-term use of lamps and commercial success. By 1879, Edison's record was 13.5 hours of work. In this lamp, he used charred Japanese bamboo fibers as a filament. To find this material, his laboratory experimented with silk, paper, cardboard, walnut shells, and employees brought reeds and palm wood from distant countries.

Pearl Street Steam Power Plant, New York, installed in 1882

The next stage was the power supply system, which, according to Edison's plan, included underground communications with backup lines in case of breakdowns, wiring for buildings, a generator and a power plant with steam engines. Already in September 1882, New York switched to incandescent lamps, the energy for which was direct current from the power plant built by Edison. Construction was carried out by the Edison Illuminating Company. In the fall of that year, a power plant appeared in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, and it was built by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Shamokin. Similar companies began to appear in other cities in the United States, and then in Europe.

Along with the companies, many jobs have appeared. In 1891, Henry Ford joined the Edison Illuminating Company as an engineer. In his spare time, he designed his first car.

1887 advertisement

Now we need to go back a couple of decades to St. Petersburg, where Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin in 1873 conducted the first experiment in street lighting using electric incandescent lamps, and in 1876 he illuminated the windows of the fashionable lingerie store Florent. In two months, only two of the four rods burned out. The lamp life was up to 700-1000 hours. In 1874, Lodygin received the Lomonosov Prize in the amount of one thousand rubles from the Academy of Sciences. But the Russian Electric Lighting Partnership Lodygin and Co. soon went bankrupt; Lodygin did not receive sufficient support and funding and emigrated to the USA.

In 1890, Lodygin received a US patent for the use of metal filaments - tungsten, osmium, iridium and palladium - in incandescent electric lamps. In 1906, Lodygin sold his patent to General Electric, and Edison began producing an improved version of the lamp on an industrial scale.

Lodygin's lamp

It’s not enough to just sell light bulbs, especially when electricity is not available everywhere. We need to make sure that people use electricity more and more often, so that they cannot imagine their life without it, including their home life. General Electric, thanks to electrification, created a virtually limitless market that it could dominate until competitors appeared. In the following decades, toasters and refrigerators took up residence in kitchens.

The refrigerator in the advertisement below was named after the French engineer Marcel Audifren, who patented the device in 1895. At the time of publication of this advertisement, according to what is written in it, Edison refrigerators were installed in one and a quarter million American homes. Such a unit cost 300 US dollars (about 4,000 dollars in today's terms), but was three times cheaper than its competitors. These were the first commercially successful refrigerators in the world. By 1962, 98.3% of families in the USA, 20% of families in Italy and 5.3% in the USSR used refrigerators. And this is largely the merit of General Electric.

General Electric refrigerator advertisement

One of the most important areas today is medical equipment. In 1885, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, while researching cathode rays, discovered new radiation and called it X-rays, and in December of the same year he published an article “On a new type of rays.” The following year, Victor Electric built an X-ray machine and proposed using it to diagnose bone fractures and detect foreign objects in the human body. Over the next twenty years, a number of other companies producing similar equipment emerged, and in 1916, Scheidel Western, Snook-Roentgen, MacAlaster & Wiggin and Victor Electric Co merged under the latter's name. In 1920, General Electric bought the resulting Victor Electric and entered the market shortly before World War II, when X-rays began to be widely used to test materials without damaging them. Today, this industry is handled by a subsidiary of General Electric - GE Healthcare.

3D printer for printing aircraft parts

General Electric is one of the largest manufacturers of MRI machines and other medical equipment, lighting, oil and gas production and refining, financial services, renewable energy and transport, such as trains. In every area, General Electric is trying to take advantage of the latest developments, including using "virtual twins" of parts in engines, wind turbines and other machines to predict wear and replace them before they break.

But GE is going through tough times right now. In 1998, 1999 and 2000, GE was recognized as the most powerful company in the world, and for many years there was a saying on Wall Street: “If you want to invest, but don’t know what to invest in, buy General Electric.” And already in 2017, Warren Buffett gets rid of

innovation ecosystem

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American companyGeneralElectric (General Electric) is a diversified corporation that produces a variety of products: from incandescent light bulbs to nuclear reactors for power plants and engines for nuclear submarines.

Founders and management of General Electric

General Electric (GE) was founded in 1878 famous inventor and genius of science - Thomas Alva Edison. The company was originally called Edison Electric.

The company began operations under its own name April 15, 1892, when Edison Electric and Thompson-Houston Electric merged. This is how the world-famous General Electric came into being. Its founders were: Thomas Alva Edison, Thomson Elihu, Charles Coffin, Edwin Houston.

The current Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of GE is Jeffrey Immelt.

Start General Electric

At first, the company was engaged in the production and distribution of one of Edison’s inventions - vacuum tubes. In 1882, Edison opened the first power plant, which was a new step towards electrification. The station provided electricity only to New York, but thanks to this Edison Electric was able to start making money on vacuum tubes.

Edison Electric's goal was to bring light to every corner of the planet. In 1890, Edison sold the company, choosing inventive activity as his main priority. But at the same time, Thomas Alva remained one of the leaders.

Education GE

April 15, 1892 is considered the date of the official start of the company’s activities under the name “General Electric”. It was formed on this day by the merger EdisonElectric and Thompson-Houston Electric. This allowed the combined management to begin implementing large-scale plans to distribute their lamps.

GE lamp

First of all, Edison, together with engineers, set about improving the existing vacuum tube, trying to make it not only cheaper, but also much more convenient to use. The result was a product that went down in history as GE lamps and could quite easily compete with gas analogues.

Lamp price GE dropped from $1.25 to $0.50! It became cheaper than gas lamps - it was a triumph.

In addition, the popularity of the inventor played into the hands of the spread of GE lamps: many became interested in the technological innovation not because of its economy or efficiency, but because it was invented by a famous genius.

Success in the new millennium

At the start of the new millennium, GE made many scientific discoveries and made a large number of developments. One of them is the modernization of the GE lamp - in 1906 The filament was replaced with a tungsten analogue thanks to a patent purchased from the Russian scientist A.N. Lodygin.

In 1901, the world saw a new development by General Electric - steam turbine with a power of 500 kW. In 1903 the company launched turbogenerator with a power of 5000 kW, which energy companies were very interested in. This further strengthened General Electric's position in this market.

Appliances

In 1909 General Electric's first toaster was released, called the D-12. The first model had a significant drawback: it was impossible to fry the bread on both sides.

Worked much more efficiently first refrigerator General Electric - « Odifren". It held the temperature really well and worked consistently. Users only needed to lubricate its parts a few times a year.

During the first 30 years of the 20th century, GE produced other household appliances, such as the coffee maker and vacuum cleaner.

Production of media products

In 1922 GE delighted the whole world with its product - the world's first radio station. In the 1940s, the company made a breakthrough in radio broadcasting with a transmission method now known as FM.

It should be mentioned that General Electric made a significant contribution to the development of sound films, and in 1928 made the first television broadcast in the United States.

Successes in other areas of production

In the 1930s Over the years, several new versions of lamps have been released, including mercury and fluorescent lamps.

During World War II, General Electric was involved in military development of radars, power plants, and jet engines.

At the end 40's years, research work began on taming atomic energy. In 1955, the first American nuclear submarine powered by a GE engine was launched.

In 1969 year after General Electric's participation in preparing the landing of American astronauts on the Moon, the name of the company was recognized by the whole world and immediately became popular.

By the beginning of the 70s of the 20th century, the corporation included about 300 divisions that were engaged in the production of a wide range of goods for a wide variety of needs.

Jack Welch - "Manager No. 1"

One of the most famous leaders of GE is a talented top manager who became the head of the company at a time when it was not in its best condition (1981) and was able to “raise” the industrial giant from its knees. Jack began his career at General Electric as an ordinary engineer. He wrote about this book "My years inGE" .

At one time, Jack Welch was recognized as “Manager No. 1” for the contribution he made to the stabilization and development of the company. His principle was reduction of the bureaucracy and improvements to General Electric's management model.

Radical measures to save the company did not pass by the figure of Jack Welch - people and journalists nicknamed him "Neutron Jack". The nickname was given due to the fact that a large number of people were simply fired because the jobs they occupied turned out to be ineffective. In general, a logical decision for the company’s management is to reduce costs through less efficient or unprofitable “balance sheet items.”

GE Shareholders

General Electric is trading at - NYSE(New York Stock Exchange). It is included in the largest stock index DowJones(DJ-30). The company is owned by a large number of institutional and individual investors, mutual funds, none of which has a significant (more than 5%) stake.

As of December 31, 2009, the largest stakes were held by the State Street Corporation bank (3.51%) and the investment company Vanguard Group Inc. (3.36%).

General Electric today

Currently, General Electric is included in the list of the most innovative companies in the world. The manufacturing conglomerate is represented in many areas and its annual turnover exceeds $146 billion, and a new environmental focus and recent acquisitions of other companies and technologies indicate that several more new products will be introduced soon.

The American diversified company General Electric was founded at the end of the 19th century. Its founder was the famous inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison - the same one who invented the incandescent lamp and suggested saying “Hello” at the beginning of a telephone conversation.

The goal of his company, the Edison General Electric Company, was to bring electricity to the lives of ordinary people. That is why the company at that time was engaged in the production of everything that was somehow connected with electricity - light bulbs and generators, cables and electrical appliances. Thomas Edison decided to make electricity as cheap as possible, thereby ending the gas era. And it took him only a few years to complete this task. On September 4, 1882, the inventor opened the world's first power plant, which began to supply New York with electricity.

After this, Thomas Edison to some extent withdrew from active participation in the affairs of the company he created, nevertheless continuing to head the board of directors. He devoted himself entirely to his inventions.

Thomas Edison

At that time, the Edison General Electric Company was having great difficulty withstanding the onslaught of competitors. It was the conditions of increased competition that determined the decision of the company's management to merge with its main rival, the Thomson-Houston Company. The merger took place in 1892, and it was from this moment that the history of the world famous energy corporation - General Electric - began.

General Electric's activities began with the creation of its first scientific and technical laboratory. It was very small by today's standards and was located in the town of Schenectady, New York. It was there that all the amazing technological breakthroughs that brought GE worldwide fame were created. At the same time, it cannot be said that the company captured certain areas of the market. No, she created these spheres herself. Since new and new developments followed one after another: fan (1902), toaster (1905), heating devices (1907), refrigerator (1910). Today, almost all of the household appliances we use every day were invented by General Electric. In addition, it was General Electric that gave the world sound cinema and established the first radio and television broadcasting in America.

The 20s of the last century became a period of active development of aviation. When the US authorities were looking for a company that could take over the development of the world's first jet engine, General Electric again took the initiative. It took the corporation just over twenty years to invent and successfully test a jet engine. That same year, the world saw the first American jet aircraft.

In 1953, General Electric specialists completed the development of Lexan rubber. It turned out to be so durable and of such high quality that the spacesuits of the astronauts who first set foot on the lunar surface in 1969 were partially made from it. In 1957, with the assistance of General Electric, the first nuclear power plant appeared. And already in the 60s, the corporation was included in the list of leading computer companies.

It is difficult to imagine an area of ​​human activity in which General Electric would not actively participate in the improvement. And even more than that - in which she did not achieve success.

True, over time, General Electric ceases to create various divisions that would cover one or another type of its activity. She chooses a simpler and much more effective path - she begins to acquire entire companies, then turning them into her own additional departments. Today, General Electric includes 5 main divisions: GE Technology Infrastructure (aircraft engines, locomotives and medical equipment), GE Energy (oil and gas equipment), GE Capital (financial activities), GE NBC Universal (world famous broadcaster NBC) and GE Consumer & Industrial (lighting equipment, uninterruptible power supplies).

The secret of General Electric's success is that the company has never been afraid to use advanced technologies in its production. That is why she so easily and successfully covered the difficult path from the laboratory of a daredevil inventor to a colossal corporation with a huge number of subsidiaries in many countries of the world.

The company is the third largest public company and the world's largest multinational company. Today, General Electric continues to actively work on high-speed aircraft engines, and also conducts successful research in the waste recycling industry. At the same time, the company does not abandon what it all once began with - the production of household appliances.

From Edison and Tesla to one of the most innovative companies of our time

The site's observer studied the history of one of the world's oldest and largest corporations, which contributed to many scientific discoveries and participated in the preparation of astronauts landing on the Moon.

There are not many companies in the world with a history of more than a century. Usually these are recognized brands, examples for the next generations. However, not every such company is now something special: they often become shadows of their former selves, simply continuing to produce proven products.

But there is a company on the market that appeared at the end of the 19th century and has today become one of the largest conglomerates in the world. It has been offering customers original solutions since its inception and remains one of the most innovative in the world to this day. This company was founded by a recognized genius inventor, and at different periods of time it was headed by the best managers. Its name is General Electric, and by its very existence it proves that there are companies that can survive any crisis and Depression, while becoming only stronger.

General Electric was founded in 1878 by Thomas Edison, who by that time had already created several great inventions and finally decided to start his own business. Initially, the company name sounded like Edison Electric, but after merging with Thompson-Houston Electric in 1892, it was decided to change the name.

At first, the company was engaged in the production and distribution of one of Edison's inventions - vacuum tubes. In 1882, Edison opened the first power plant, which was a new step towards the era of electricity. It provided electricity only to New York, but thanks to this Edison Electric was able to start making money on vacuum tubes. General Electric's goal was to light up the world. In 1890, Edison sold the company, preferring inventive activities to business, but remained one of the leaders.

In 1885, another important event occurred that influenced both the company and the development of technology. Thomas Edison hired a young and talented inventor - Nikola Tesla. In the future, geniuses will not work together, but during the time that they worked together, they made several discoveries.

In 1892, after merging with Thompson-Houston Electric, the company had enough power to consider distributing light bulbs globally—but it was difficult to do. As Edison said, people are rather inert when it comes to new inventions, and tend to use proven approaches. In addition, the lamps were expensive and only attracted enthusiasts. Another problem was the lack of electrical power sources.

All this did not allow the young company to make larger profits. First of all, Edison, together with engineers, set about improving the vacuum tube, trying to make it not only cheaper, but also much more convenient to use. The resulting product went down in history under the name GE lamp and could easily compete with gas analogues. Its price eventually dropped from $1.25 to $0.50. This, in turn, led to Edison's invention becoming cheaper than gas lamps. In addition, the popularity of the inventor played into the hands of the spread of GE lamps: many became interested in the new technology not because of its economy or efficiency, but because it was developed by a world-famous genius.

The company's next developments in the last decade of the 19th century included electric generators and various chemicals. The company's technology developed so quickly in large part due to the work of Edison and other brilliant scientists who worked at General Electric. Thanks to them, the company was able to independently create new markets in which there was absolutely no competition, and enjoyed the admiration of consumers: a technological revolution was taking place before their eyes.

The company's management appreciated these changes and in 1900 launched a new independent division - research laboratories. Over the history of the company, the best technological minds of mankind have worked here. An important achievement of General Electric at the turn of the century was its active participation in the electrification of the planet.

At the beginning of the 20th century, several projects were developed in GE laboratories, which then played a role in the development of mankind. First of all, these include the improvement of the GE lamp. In 1906, the filament was replaced with a tungsten analogue thanks to a patent purchased from the Russian scientist Lodygin. However, the material was expensive, and the production of new models would have to be greatly limited. One of General Electric's engineers, William Coolidge, managed to figure out how to reduce the price, as a result of which the tungsten filament surpassed all others and became the standard for the industry.

The improvement of the GE light bulb was completed by another laboratory scientist, Irving Langmuir, who solved the problem of rapid evaporation of the filament in a vacuum by filling the flask with argon, which led to an increase in the duration of its operation. The resulting lamp became an industry standard.

At the beginning of the 20th century, another project was produced in General Electric laboratories - a high-speed steam turbine. It cannot be said that the company created this technology alone, but its influence is difficult to overestimate. Until 1900, many European scientists were involved in similar projects and certain technical developments were created, but the rest was completed by General Electric. In 1901, the world saw the final model with a power of 500 kW.

In 1903, the company launched a turbogenerator with a power of 5000 kW, which attracted great interest from energy companies. This further strengthened General Electric's position in this market.

In addition to global technological devices, the company created electrical appliances for household use. In 1909, General Electric's first toaster, called the D-12, was released. True, the first model had a significant drawback: it was impossible to fry the bread on both sides.

General Electric's first refrigerator, the Odifren, worked much more efficiently. It held temperature really well, worked great, and users only had to lubricate its parts a few times a year. This model lasted on the market for almost 17 years. The company did not stop there and until the 1930s managed to create many more different household devices, from a coffee maker to a vacuum cleaner.

An important achievement of General Electric was the creation of the first radio station in 1922, which became a step in the development of radio communications for government needs. In the 1940s, the company made a breakthrough in radio broadcasting with the transmission method now known as FM. It should be mentioned that General Electric made a significant contribution to the development of sound cinema, and in 1928 it carried out the first television broadcast in America.

In 1931, Thomas Edison died and the “Edison era” ended; the era of the company’s formation became a thing of the past. Since the early 1930s, General Electric has established itself as a true industry changer. At the same time, all sorts of conspiracy theories about the company constantly arise in the press and in people's minds. Even now, from time to time there are rumors that during Thomas Edison's lifetime an agreement was signed with other tycoons - such as Ford and Carnegie - on the distribution of spheres of influence, or that it was Edison who was one of those who introduced the concept of expiration date to ensure constant turnover of their products.

Another story that portrays General Electric as a kind of bastion of evil is that Tesla, while working for the company, made a number of inventions that could significantly reduce the cost of electricity, and other revolutionary discoveries that would change the world, but Edison either took them into his hands , or handed it over to the US government, which, in turn, classified the development. Naturally, there is no physical evidence of this theory, which does not prevent some people from believing in it.

In the 1930s, several new lamp options were released, including mercury lamps and fluorescent lamps. In addition, the company was one of the first to use fluorescent light to create car headlights.

The outbreak of World War II led to the fact that General Electric, like many other US companies, began to engage in military developments. The government commissioned General Electric to develop radars and power plants, as well as jet engines, for military purposes. The company's contribution to the technological support of the US Air Force is highly valued.

In 1941, General Electric attracted the attention of the Antimonopoly Committee: as it turned out, the company controlled about 85% of the production of electric lamps, which made it a monopolist. As a result, due to the court decision, General Electric had to allow other companies to use some of their patents. This was one of the first, but not the last, cases of the influence of antimonopoly legislation on the company.

In 1961, a similar story happened: the Antimonopoly Committee found that GE was artificially inflating prices in the US electronics market. The result was again disappointing: a fine of $437 thousand and compensation to victims in the amount of $50 million, as well as the dismissal of two top managers.

In the late 1940s, after the successful Manhattan Project, many companies around the world, together with scientists, sought to harness atomic energy. The trend has not spared such a giant as General Electric. After conducting its own research, the company began producing nuclear electric motors. General Electric in this field allowed the US government to produce a Seawolf class nuclear submarine already in 1955. In addition, General Electric was involved in the production of autopilots and engines for jet aircraft.

One of the important inventions of this time was Lexan, a highly durable material that became an ideal glass substitute. The discovery of Lexan occurred in 1953: it was first obtained by Hermann Schnell, who worked at Bayer, and a couple of days later his achievement was repeated by Daniel Fox from General Electric.

The company, which had contracts with the American government, easily found use for Lexan in the military industry, and later began to use it in other industries, in particular in household appliances. By the way, it was from this material that done Astronauts' visors during Neil Armstrong's lunar landing. In addition, during the organization of the flight, the company presented more than 37 inventions useful to astronauts.

The continuous growth of General Electric's divisions made the company difficult to manage in the late 1950s. At that time, the giant had almost 300 divisions that were engaged in absolutely everything: from creating engines for the Air Force to producing artificial diamonds. The brand needed restructuring - and by 1960, General Electric had turned into a real conglomerate, which included more than 25 companies. In one of them, General Electric Plastics, in 1960 a young engineer got a job, who was destined to significantly influence the further development of the famous brand. His name is Jack Welch, and he is now known as one of the most influential CEOs in history, as well as the author of several books on business management.

At first, Welch’s career did not develop very quickly, moreover, the bureaucracy in the company brought him to the point that after a year he wanted to leave. But the head of the department, appreciating the newcomer’s abilities, persuaded him to stay and protected him from corporate red tape. General Electric Plastics was one of the main divisions involved in the development of technologies for landing on the Moon, and Welch also contributed to the development of this direction. In 1969, Jack became head of the plastics division, and by 1977 he had risen to head of the consumer products sector. Much of his rapid advancement was due to his becoming a protégé of Reuben Gutoff, who had risen to the heights of corporate power. In 1980, Welch became the company's CEO.

But let's go back a little. In 1969, after General Electric's participation in preparing the moon landing, the brand gained serious fame around the world. The company, as in the days of Edison, was considered revolutionary - but everything was not as good as it might seem. In an effort to maintain dominance in various industries, General Electric managed to create several unprofitable divisions that had to be sold.

In addition, the company has ceased to be number one in the electronics market. To make up for lost time, more than $100 million was invested in the area. General Electric's high-profile deal in the 1970s was its merger with Utah International, which specialized in the production of coal, oil and gas. The merger turned out to be very useful: it provided almost 20% of the company's revenue.

There were also problems in the nuclear energy sector, which became unprofitable for the company in the 1970s. Moreover, people's attitudes towards this industry began to change, which led to mass protests and increased attention from environmentalists. To level the situation, we had to make additional investments and carry out restructuring. A significant part of the units were retrained to study technologies for improving nuclear energy.

In 1981, a new significant phase in the life of the company began, which in the future would be called the “Welch era.” Jack Welch headed General Electric during a difficult period: a giant company with an amazing history, which still seemed unsinkable, needed a good administrator more than ever. The first problem was the dominance of bureaucracy, which seriously affected the speed of decision-making. This, in turn, did not allow the company to quickly respond to changes in the market. In addition, the overabundance of companies within the conglomerate was a hindrance: the giant was engaged in all possible areas, not dominating anywhere and suffering losses.

Welch's appointment was viewed with skepticism by many, but Jack's many years of service to the good of the company, as well as his reputation as a frank person who does not recognize any authority and is ready to express his opinion to anyone's face, spoke in favor of the decision of the board of directors. In addition, the divisions headed by Welch were the most efficient in the conglomerate.

Be that as it may, Jack gained power over a company with more than 400 thousand employees and a capitalization level exceeding a billion dollars. Analysts froze, awaiting the first decisions of the new leader. Known for his special approach to management, Welch began to restore order in his possessions. According to the entrepreneur, at first he had to clean out General Electric from numerous slackers. Most top managers at that time considered promotions to be a reward from the company for faithful service and, having received a “warm place”, simply rested on their laurels. In addition, employees were conditioned to believe that General Electric's products were the best, hence the decline in profits, because in reality everything was not that good.

Welch began to fight this trend harshly, firing managers who interfered with development. He introduced a new principle into the corporate culture: if a company is not the first or second in the industry, it must be destroyed, and he himself began to put it into practice, reducing production and closing entire areas. The press began to sneer that after the new leader only buildings remained, and they gave him the nickname “Neutron Jack.” Welch himself responded to this by noting that he had never heard of companies going bankrupt that cut costs.

In 1981, about 300 enterprises of the conglomerate were sold - thus General Electric earned about $15 billion. There was a significant reduction in staff: first of all, those who were simply idle waiting for a pension or a “golden parachute” were fired. But this was only the beginning of a large-scale restructuring of the company.

The following changes affected all employees. For example, Welch introduced a division of personnel into categories A, B, C: the first included the best of the best, in fact the future of the company (there should have been no more than 20%), and the latter risked falling into those who did not cope well with their duties, candidates for dismissal (10% of employees). In category B, the “backbone” of the company remained - professional, but not as proactive as in group A, employees. This innovation plunged General Electric employees into an endless race as everyone tried to stay in the top two groups to keep their jobs.

Welch's penchant for laying off staff and cutting production soon became legendary. Most Americans were horrified by the closure of the iron plant in California. There were television programs about this, in which former workers gave interviews, saying that they had been betrayed, and a priest also spoke, condemning the hard-heartedness of the rich. All this did not make much of an impression on Welch - moreover, he readily commented on the situation, explaining that he was ready to close any unprofitable production, regardless of public opinion. In 1984, Jack was included in Fortune magazine's list of toughest CEOs.

However, thanks to tough reforms, the company's profits increased to $2.3 billion by 1985, silencing even its most vocal critics.

To ensure quality training for management personnel, in 1981 Welch took another important step - he rebuilt the Crotonville training center. In the future, it will become an important point in communicating GE's corporate values. It took Welch a long time to convince the board of directors of the benefits of such centers.

Simultaneously with the sale of unprofitable companies, the head of General Electric also made purchases - at the same time, he had to carefully choose new directions. In 1985, Welch acquired NBC from RCA for $6.3 billion. Many analysts appreciated the speed of preparation of the transaction, which took only 36 days, but criticized the acquisition itself, believing that it would harm the conglomerate. They were wrong: within a year, General Electric had recouped almost $2 billion spent on the acquisition.

In the 1980s, the company is believed to have made more than 500 acquisitions. Most of them worked out, but not all: for example, the 1986 acquisition of one of the oldest Wall Street banks, Kidder Peabody, turned out to be a failure.

A few months after this purchase, General Electric became involved in a major scandal. One of Kidder Peabody's best employees, Martin Miguel, admitted that he provided inside information about transactions for money. The company was again drawn into legal proceedings, after which it was necessary to fire some of the bank's staff and also pay a $25 million fine. Kidder Peabody would then become involved in several more scandals and eventually be sold in 1994.

In 1987, changes occurred in the company's policy: if earlier the conglomerate sought to maintain its position in the domestic market, now it turned its attention to other countries. General Electric's new course was the desire to become an international corporation: it began acquiring European companies, from medical equipment manufacturers to service companies. Subsequently, expansion continued in the Asian market.

In the early 1990s, General Electric's position looked unshakable. Net income reached $4.4 billion in 1990. At the same time, many skeptics expected problems to arise in connection with the controversial acquisitions the conglomerate made in the past decade.

Back in the early 1980s, General Electric began to work closely with the financial sector, for which it used a subsidiary of GE Credit (later named Capital), under whose brand several more financial companies were united. The purpose of the new entity was leasing and issuing loans. With the advent of the 1990s, the growth of this company continued.

In 1991, another scandal occurred. This time, the company's image suffered due to the release of the documentary "A Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and the Environment." The US population temporarily announced a boycott of the corporation's medical and household products.

In addition, in the 1990s, the company was put on trial: a whole batch of sold reactors was found to be defective. As a result of the hearings, several top managers of the companies were fired, and General Electric paid a fine of $400 million.

At the beginning of the decade, a crisis struck Europe. The company's management took full advantage of the situation and by 1995 had acquired assets worth more than $50 billion. In 1996, several banks in Eastern Europe were purchased, as well as Pet Protect, a leading company in the British pet insurance market. Each of the purchases eventually paid off, although at first the acquisition of such assets looked quite risky.

The same could be said about a deal concluded in 1998 aimed at acquiring a package of automobile loans, which was valued at $1.1 billion. Welch was initially skeptical about the idea, but was convinced. GE Capital's growth continues to be driven by many deals that looked crazy at first but ended up turning a profit. In 2000, this company brought more than 40% of the conglomerate's revenue.

The story of General Electric in the 1990s is not only known from the financial sector. The conglomerate did not abandon other directions, which largely predetermined its growth. For example, a subsidiary of GE Healthcare, which was one of the largest suppliers of medical equipment, has made several key changes in the medical industry. Research in the field of ultrasound imaging allowed Healthcare to become one of the market leaders by 2000. Also at this time, a new model of tubes for X-ray machines and tomographs was developed, which increased their service life.

NBC occupied an important place in the development of the company in the 1990s, which Welch had to “raise” for quite some time. The problem was that the television network's management had an old-fashioned approach to its own development, management lacked motivation, and the latest series were failures, which affected profits. As we've said, Welch typically sold unprofitable companies within the conglomerate, but NBC was too valuable and efforts were soon made to turn it around and grow it. First of all, this was the release of new series, a gradual transition to cable broadcasting and a partial change of management.

To improve performance, changes were made to the company's management. Thus, Don Ohlmeyer became director of branch operations, Andy Lack began to head the news department, and Warren Littfield was responsible for entertainment programs. Under the leadership of this trio, the company was transformed: news releases became more informative, new series were launched, including “Friends” and “Emergency”. In 1996, profits reached $1 billion for the first time.

In 1998, a new method of processing natural diamonds was developed. The resulting technology actually completed the natural process to which stones are subjected in the thickness of the earth. At the same time, his speed was much higher, and this did not affect the resulting jewelry. The technology was successfully implemented, and at the end of the year the division's profit was $30 million.

Speaking about the 1990s in the history of the company, Jack Welch emphasizes that one of the main areas of work was the speedy integration into markets that were experiencing a transition period. Initially, this approach did not look attractive, but over time it brought serious profits. At the same time, the company continued to increase its capacity in the markets of other countries: for example, it was one of the first to work in the financial sector of Japan, produce goods in India and sell its products in a number of other countries where other corporations were in no hurry to enter.

In 2000, General Electric tried to pull off a deal that could be called the purchase of the century. Welch was going to acquire the Honeywell conglomerate for $41 billion. The risk assessment and negotiations took almost a year, with every element of the merger reviewed by EU competition authorities. As a result, the terms of the deal proposed by the EU Commission were not accepted, and the merger did not take place. Thus, General Electic lost the opportunity to compete in the production of engines with such a giant as Rolls-Royce. For Welch, this was a bitter failure, because as a result of the deal, the conglomerate could have increased several times, which would have been the crowning achievement of his career.

In 2001, Jack Welch retired at the age of 66. During his reign, the company underwent significant changes and was seriously restructured - and the transformations occurred precisely when the company most needed them. Net income in Welch's last full year reached $12.7 billion, a record. Jack's reputation within the conglomerate was so high that many wanted him to hold the position for life. It took two years to find a successor, but in 2001 the right person was found. It was Jeffrey Immelt - like Welch, he worked most of his life at General Electric, first as an ordinary employee and then as head of the medical division.

The new leader took office four days before the events of September 11, which had an extremely negative impact on the market. General Electric at that time had divisions involved in both insurance and the production of aircraft engines. The terrorist attack affected both areas equally. The conglomerate was forced to pay more than $600 million in insurance payments and began cutting production of aircraft parts.

A new restructuring is imminent in the company: Immelt united the companies included in the conglomerate, taking into account their areas. During the first few years of management, he separated six divisions: Energy, Healthcare, Transportation, Aviation, Capital, Home & Business Solutions. Each of them contained various acquired companies from these industries.

Jeffrey approached reforms within the company very carefully, at first making only small changes to some of Welch's decisions, because General Electric still remembered the days of “neutron Jack,” who was a kind of idol for the huge conglomerate.

The main innovation that Immelt introduced was a gradual transition to working on more durable innovative projects. The desire for immediate profit was replaced by gradual growth in promising directions. As part of this strategy, Enron Wind was acquired in 2002, which marked the beginning of developments in the field of wind energy. The number of purchases decreased, which meant a change in expansion strategy. According to Immelt, General Electric had enough strength to make a discovery in any of the areas, so many purchases were no longer necessary.

Following this idea, Immelt set about rebuilding research centers within the company in an attempt to restore General Electric to the glory of a pioneer in the technology market, which had gradually been forgotten during Welch's tenure. The work of the company's top management has been changed. Jeffrey held several dozen meetings with department heads and realized that they had global ideas about development that they did not always express. Then Immelt introduced a standard for innovative ideas: each manager was now required to submit at least three innovative proposals per year.

It may seem that Immelt is a rather calm person compared to Welch, who could easily turn to shouting and literally squeezed all the juice out of his subordinates. This would be a misconception: Immelt immediately fired employees who performed their duties poorly. Despite his apparent poise, he did not believe in second chances and believed that irresponsibility was incorrigible.

The first changes introduced at General Electric by the CEO so impressed the press that Immelt received the title of Person of the Year by the Financial Times.

But let's return to the changes in the company. In 2004, the conglomerate's program, called Eco-imagination, began work - the best minds of General Electric were supposed to create innovations in the field of ecology. The astute Immelt noticed even at the time of his appointment that the company needed progress in this area. To this end, Enron Wind was acquired, which by 2008 will turn General Electric into one of the leaders in the field of wind energy.

Eco-imagination paid off, and by 2008 the company had become the author of almost a hundred innovations in the field of ecology, which turned the conglomerate hated by environmentalists into an example of the correct attitude towards the environment.

To drive innovation in the aircraft industry, Smiths Aerospace was acquired in 2007 for nearly $5 billion, strengthening General Electric Aviation and allowing the company to become one of the top manufacturers of aircraft parts by 2009 with annual revenues of $18.7 billion.

In 2008, another financial crisis broke out, the approach of which Immelt had foreseen long before it. Already in 2007, he began to get rid of unprofitable and insufficiently promising divisions. Thus, GE Plastics was sold, which, despite its glorious history, had not brought new discoveries for a long time. The $11 billion received was invested in other areas.

During the crisis, the assets of GE Capital were reduced, which until recently provided up to 40% of the conglomerate's profit, and now risked becoming unprofitable. As a result, its profitability decreased, but did not become catastrophically low. Also, during the crisis, the production of medical equipment was reduced, which was associated with a decrease in the number of purchases.

The company's profit increased compared to 2007, which indicated successful management actions. At the same time, the conglomerate could not avoid a drop in share price by 75%. The protracted crisis in 2009 led to staff reductions and further abandonment of some production facilities. At the same time, Immelt managed to appear in the press thanks to an article he co-wrote with several professors on why it is worth switching to production in other countries.

His vision was reflected in the approach to integration into other markets. Starting in 2011, GE began investing even in African countries, with the condition that the region had conditions for dynamic growth.

In 2011, John Wood, an oil drilling company, was acquired for $2.8 billion. This continued the expansion of the conglomerate's resources division, which in the previous two years had acquired Hydril, a developer of pressure control equipment, and Vetco Gray, a manufacturer of oil and gas production equipment. GE Capital also underwent changes, getting rid of some non-core assets, and in 2012 it purchased Metlife deposits in the amount of $7 billion.

In 2011, General Electric got into another scandal. This time, attacks on the company were related to its participation in the construction of the Japanese Fukushima 1 power plant. As it turned out, 35 years ago it was known that in the event of high pressure and cooling problems, reactor protection could be unreliable. The brand has suffered again due to nuclear power.

In 2014, the company's net income was $15 billion. At the same time, General Electric began making moves to buy the French energy company Alstom. The deal had to be prepared quite meticulously in order, firstly, to bypass competitors represented by Siemens and Mitsubishi, and secondly, to pass the EU antitrust check. It was necessary to sell the Alstom division, which was engaged in the production of gas turbines, to its direct competitor Ansaldo Energia.

The terms of the acquisition had to be changed several times to comply with the requirements of the EU and the Alstom board of directors. In September 2015, it became clear that the deal would be completed and the purchase price would be $17 billion. Many analysts pointed to the successful work of Immelt, who turned out to be a much better lobbyist than his predecessor.

In 2015, another important change occurred: due to the tightening of banking legislation and a change in the policy of the conglomerate, which is about to leave the financial market, it was announced that most of GE Capital would be sold.

To summarize, it should be noted that for Americans, General Electric has become a symbol of indestructibility and an illustration of the ambitions of US companies, having withstood many crises, from the Great Depression to modern problems.

This skill is largely associated with the correct selection of leadership. The company created by Thomas Edison has always been led by truly talented managers - such as Welch and Immelt. In addition, General Electric is famous for its ability to train personnel, and the history of the brand knows many examples when top managers started out as ordinary specialists.

Currently, General Electric is included in the list of the most innovative companies in the world. The conglomerate has a presence in a variety of industries and has annual revenues of more than $148 billion, with a new environmental focus and recent acquisitions suggesting more new products are on the way. Regardless, General Electric is a great example of how a company with more than 130 years of history can remain innovative no matter what.

From a successful, but bulky and gradually decrepit industrial giant to a highly profitable and harmoniously organized conglomerate, where production is combined with technical service and the development of new technologies.

The history of General Electric begins in 1878, when Thomas Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company to produce the incandescent lamp he invented. A year later, together with another novelty - a dynamo - he released the first light bulb. As new products became available, he renamed the company Edison General Electric. Then competitors began to appear. One of them was Thomson-Houston Electric, which quickly gained strength through mergers and acquisitions of other firms. In 1892, Edison merged his enterprise with it, and a new large structure was born with the name General Electric.

Edison worked for his company for several years, working on new developments and serving as a consultant. During this time, his company took part in various production projects, such as the creation of the largest electric locomotives and transformers. Success in these areas in 1896 secured its place on the list of the newly launched Dow Jones Industrial Average. And among the industrial firms noted then, General Electric is the only company that has still retained such status.

Edison's passion for invention spread to those around him. In 1900, General Electric acquired a research center headed by Dr. Willis R. Whitney. Over the years, this facility in Schenectady, New York, has seen scientists work on many innovative ideas, and it later grew into the world's largest private design laboratory. Among the abundance of early products born here are the electric-powered watercraft, developed in 1912 specifically for the US Navy, and the first sealed home refrigerator, introduced in 1925.

The 1920s marked the beginning of a long tradition in the history of General Electric - the production of televisions and radios. The company first became interested in the fledgling infotainment industry in 1919, helping David Sarnoff to found the corporation. The initial task for General Electric was to bring under its control as large a segment of the radio receiver market as possible, sales of which in 1921 were equal to 12 million units, and by 1926 they had already reached 207 million. But a little later, General Electric also began to broadcast, in 1922 it launched the radio channel WGY, based in Schenectady and entering into competition with program producers RCA.

While RCA was building the NBC network and experimenting with the most daring forms of television - both as a broadcaster and as a manufacturer of equipment - General Electric acquired a plastics plant that became part of the production of televisions and related products.

With the outbreak of World War II, the company became involved in aviation. In 1942, a turboprop engine produced by General Electric was installed in the first American jet aircraft. And ten years later, thanks to its J-79 jet engines, aircraft began to move at speeds only half the speed of sound. The company did not forget to improve more modest equipment, thanks to which it gained recognition in previous years. In the 1950s, General Electric began assembling the first computers (with RCA), and its appliance businesses offered Toast-R-Oven microwave ovens and clothes dryers.

In subsequent years, General Electric played a prominent role in the implementation of even more complex technical projects - in particular, in the creation of meteorological satellites. In 1969, she helped land the Apollo spacecraft on the Moon, an achievement that was the result of 37 different operations carried out by the company's 6,000 employees. Dr. Ivar Jaiver from the General Electric Research Center received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, and in 1975 the laboratory developed a computer tomograph for medical diagnostics. Meanwhile, its vacuum businesses have grown into a major international supplier of light bulbs and other electrical products. The home appliances sector was the world's leading manufacturer of refrigerators, freezers, ovens, cookers, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, microwave ovens, garbage disposals, compactors, air conditioners and water filters. Aviation industrial divisions began to develop leasing, and other structures were engaged in the production of electricity, medical equipment and carried out financial transactions for servicing individuals and legal entities.

However, this was not enough for the shareholders, and in 1981 they caused a stir by appointing John Francis “Jack” Welch Jr. to head the company. The Massachusetts native became not only the youngest CEO of General Electric in its history, but also the first person with a doctorate (he studied for a doctorate in chemical engineering) at the helm of the corporation. Welch immediately made it clear that big changes awaited the company in the new century. Without any delay, he announced that the 89-year-old enterprise would henceforth fight only in those areas where it could take first or second place among other players.

To achieve this goal, the new manager began to curtail the production of small household appliances. Welch cut his workforce from 404,000 to 229,000, eliminating the perennial problem of late wages, and along the way earning the nickname “Neutron Jack” (after the bomb that kills people while leaving buildings intact). He sold off General Electric businesses worth $12 billion but acquired others for $26 billion. Among the purchases were RCA Corporation and its television network NBC. Then, however, Welch slightly adjusted the results of the deal, selling RCA's household electrical division (he considered it a liability) and buying a French company that produces medical equipment. In order to strengthen the corporation's position in the European markets of household appliances, medical equipment, electrical engineering and energy, Welch entered into an alliance with the British company General Electric, which previously had nothing to do with its American namesake. He also “thinned out” the leadership levels of each division, reducing the number of chiefs from 10-11 to 4-5.

The venerable manufacturing giant has transformed itself into a titan that has focused primarily on providing services, which has drawn some criticism from some experts. Meanwhile, the company's market weight soared from $12 billion to $100 billion, and the number of detractors began to rapidly decline as the camp of admirers expanded.

Jack Welch was preparing General Electric for the new millennium, trying to get all the corporation's structures to work at full capacity. In 1995, after he had undergone three bypass surgeries and began talking about a successor, Welch announced his famous Six Sigma strategy. It concerned quality criteria: for every million operations there should be no more than 3-4 units of defective products, that is, Six Sigma prescribed an almost perfect production process. Welch invested $200 million to implement the program in 200 units. This immediately brought significant economic benefits, and Welch began to apply this approach everywhere. Other companies have also adopted his initiative to improve customer service, product quality, productivity and other aspects of their operations.

Under Welch's leadership, General Electric in 1997 became the first company in the world whose market capitalization exceeded $200 billion. Using the NBC and Microsoft networks to create the high-profile television and Internet news service MSNBC, Welch aggressively expanded the range of products his company sold online. This, in particular, included financial transactions such as insurance, sales of credit cards, and loans for the purchase of real estate. Welch also achieved the goal of being ranked first or second in many sectors of the economy. Broadcast networks and home appliances, aircraft engines and electric locomotives, medical equipment and plastic products - General Electric held leading positions in all of these markets. However, despite such achievements, Welch continued to acquire about a hundred new companies every year.

And so, after working for 20 years, he announced his imminent retirement in 2001. In late 2000, General Electric named 44-year-old Jeffrey Immelt, who previously led the company's medical equipment business, as Welch's successor. Immediately taking up the duties of president and chairman of the corporation, Immelt worked closely with his predecessor until his official confirmation.

Welch's accomplishments exceeded all expectations: the company was ranked fifth on Fortune magazine's list of 500 corporations, excelled in at least 10 different industries, and had operations in more than 100 countries. Today, General Electric is one of the most innovative companies in the world.