History of GE
Highlights throughout the history of GE
2023
GE completes the spinoff of GE HealthCare.
1986
GE Lighting provides the products and funding to relight the Statue of Liberty.
1978
The first routine total-body computed tomography (CT) scanner is made widely available. The 7800 CT scanner is the first CT system designed by GE HealthCare.
1974
Reginald Jones, GE’s Chairman and CEO from 1972 to 1981, leads a national effort to support minority engineering. Throughout the 70s, the GE Foundation provides grants to strengthen academic offerings in historically black engineering schools, increase the overall number of minority enrollees and graduates, and encourage leadership activities in engineering for minorities. These grants help form what will become the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME).
1962
GE researchers achieve two laser breakthroughs that will have profound effects on manufacturing. In this banner year, Robert N. Hall demonstrates the first laser diode device, and Nick Holonyak, Jr. demonstrates the first semiconductor laser with a visible emission. Lasers would later have an important role in the additive manufacturing process.
1955
GE provides Union Pacific with 8,500 horsepower gas-turbine electric locomotives. To this day, they are the most powerful locomotives in history.
1952
The GE Education Fund is renamed the GE Foundation in 1952. In 1954, the Foundation creates the concept of corporate gift-matching – still in practice today – to support employees in their personal philanthropy by providing a 1:1 match. This is the first corporate matching gift program for colleges and universities, which over time revolutionized corporate giving and empowered employees and corporations to team up and leverage their higher education donations.
1947
GE launches the first completely automatic clothes washer.
1944
GE introduces silicone for commercial use. It pioneers a more efficient manufacturing process that remain in use for decades.
1935
The first major league night baseball game is played at Crosley Field in Cincinatti, under GE Lighting Novalux lamps.
1925
GE launches the first hermetically-sealed refrigerator.
1879
Thomas Edison and his researchers create a lightbulb filament that can incandesce for 1,200 hours. After experimenting with over 6,000 different materials, they hit upon carbonizing either paper or bamboo, baking the material until the cellulose effectively becomes carbon fiber.
