General electric founder
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General Electric Corporation is one of the largest corporations in the world. Today its business activities span a wide range of areas—everything from aircraft engine manufacturing, appliances, healthcare equipment, and even the NBC television network. As its name implies, however, GE can trace its roots to the early power industry. It was formed in 1892, the result of a merger of the competing companies Edison General Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Company. The merger was not fully supported by Thomas Edison himself, who withdrew from running the business and returned to the laboratory. Even though Edison was not at the helm, the people at GE adopted one of Edison’s greatest ideas. Following Edison’s example, GE established its first permanent research laboratory in Schenectady, NY, in 1900. This lab has produced a startling number of innovations over the years.
Not surprisingly, GE originally focused on power-industry related items, such as electric lamps, generators, alternators, motors, and other. But even in its early years it began researching other areas, such
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Elihu Thomson
English-American engineer and inventor (1853–1937)
Elihu Thomson (March 29, 1853 – March 13, 1937) was an English-American engineer and inventor who was instrumental in the founding of major electrical companies in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
Early life
He was born in Manchester, England, on March 29, 1853, but his family moved to Philadelphia in the United States in 1858.[1] Thomson attended Central High School in Philadelphia and graduated in 1870.[2] Thomson took a teaching position at Central, and in 1876, at the age of twenty-three, held the chair of Chemistry. In 1880, he left Central to pursue research in the emerging field of electrical engineering.[3]
Electrical innovations
With Edwin J. Houston, a former teacher and later colleague of Thomson's at Central High School, Thomson founded the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Notable inventions created by Thomson during this period include an arc-lighting system, an automatically regulated three-coil dynamo, a magnetic lightning arres
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Elihu Thomson
Elihu Thomson was born in England on March 29, 1853. He would later become one of the most prolific inventors in U.S. history and would join Thomas Edison to form one of the most pervasive companies in the world, General Electric.
Thomson grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, and even in high school, he was keenly aware of the possibilities electricity held for the future. As a teenager he wrote, “There is scarcely a day passing on which some new use for electricity is not discovered. It seems destined to become at some future time the means of obtaining light, heat, and mechanical force.
Educated in science, Thomson became a science professor at Philadelphia's Central High School. In 1880, he and fellow science professor Edwin Houston established a company together, Thomson-Houston, to sell arc lamp systems. The two became quite successful and diversified into other electrical markets. In 1886 they purchased the Sawyer & Man Electric Co. and began making incandescent lamps under the Sawyer-Man patents.
In 1889, a few years after German physicist Heinrich R
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