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General Electric Company

Boston, Massachusetts, founded Schenectady, New York 1892

BiographyCreated through a series of merges between several companies owned and operated by Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), one of the most prolific inventors in electricity characterized by his notable inventions of the first practical light bulb in 1879, the movie camera and viewer in 1890 alongside his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (1860--1935), and the phonograph in 1877, the company proved to play a significant role in scientific and industrial expansion. Founded also through the operation of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, the General Electric Company served as a pioneer in electrical innovation and discovery through the company's creation of the General Electric Laboratory in 1900, the first industrial research facility in the U.S., and its involvement in World War II technology through manufacturing the first U.S. jet engine in 1941, and military electronics. Expanding post-WWII, the company continued to revolutionize technological advancements through their development in further realms of technology such as medical imaging and computing, becoming a guiding figure in manufacturing computers, semiconductors, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology, and renewable energy systems by the subsequent half of the twentieth century. Despite facing financial issues in the emergence of the twenty-first century, the company continues to play an influential role in molding the future of technology, specifically through its breaking up into three separate companies: General Electric Aerospace, General Electric HealthCare (disbanded as a publicly traded company in 2023), and General Electric Vernova in 2024.

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