General Electric was founded in 1878 by Thomas Edison as Edison Electric Light Company. Edison invents electric light on October 21st 1879 in New Jersey. The carbon filament lamp successfully completes a forty-hour durability test in his laboratory in Menlo Park. This invention would change people's lives as no other ever had. To power the carbon filament lamp Edison and his team had to develop dynamos that convert mechanical energy into electricity so they would be able to power neighborhood-wide lighting systems.
US patent no. 223,898 covers the fundamental features of the carbon filament lamp and it was granted to Edison on January 27 1880. Edison improves the durability of his lamps with carbonized bamboo filaments which increases their lifespan to six-hundred hours. Even to this day light bulbs are being improved to make them last longer.
Edison builds his business and finally in 1892 GE is born through the merging of The General Electric Company with the Edison General Electric Company. GE enters the world of medical science when they make the first electrical equipment for the production of X-rays in 1896 and so begins a long tradition of GE advances in medical imagery is begun with this practical application of making x-rays. In 1900 GE establishes the first laboratory in the U.S. dedicated to scientific research in Schenectady, New York. GE believes that with scientific research new important discoveries will be made. The company keeps making advancements on many levels and in many branches and GE grows, making history along the way. Their improvements in vacuum tube design help make possible modern electronics and radio. Again GE radically changes our world with news from across the world now at our fingertips.
In 1939 the first female scientist joins the GE Research Laboratory. She is Katharine Burr, known widely as the woman who invented non-reflecting, 'invisible' glass which became the prototype of coatings used today on virtually all camera lenses and optical devices.
The war brings with it a new impulse for scientific discovery. GE builds the United States' first jet engine, the first turboprop and autopilot.
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