The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering.
It was founded in London in 1886 as an electrical goods wholesaler named G. Binswanger and Company, which quickly adopted a then-unorthodox business model of supplying electrical components over the counter. In 1889, the business was incorporated as the General Electric Company Ltd, and became a public limited company 11 years later. During the 1890s and 1900s, the company heavily invested into electric lighting, a sector that proved to be immensely profitable in the long term. The GEC was heavily impacted by the outbreak of the First World War, supplying various goods to the military, and thus becoming a major player in the electrical industry. In 1921, a new purpose-built company headquarters (Magnet House) was opened in Kingsway, London; two years later, GEC's industrial research laboratories at Wembley (later named the Hirst Research Centre) also opened. In the 1920s, the company was heavily involved in the creation and roll-out of Britain's National Grid.
During the Second World War, GEC made several significant contributions to the Allied war effort, such as the development of the cavity magnetron for radar, various advances in communications technology, and the mass production of valves, lamps, and lighting equipment. In 1961, GEC merged with Radio & Allied Industries. Throughout the mid-to-late 1960s, GEC's new managing director, Arnold Weinstock, sought to rationalise the British electrical industry and boost efficiency via a series of cut-backs and mergers that returned the company to profit. GEC acquired Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) in 1967, and merged with English Electric one year later. The company continued to expand via acquisitions; between 1979 and 1981, GEC acquired W & T Avery, Cincinnati Electronics, and Picker Corporation.
During the 1980s, the company was Britain's largest private employer with over 250,000 employees; becoming one of the first companies in the new FTSE 100 Index in 1984. It made profits in excess of £1 billion per year at its peak in the 1990s. In June 1998, GEC sold its share of the joint venture GEC-Alsthom on the Paris stock exchange. In December 1999, GEC's defence arm, Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), was sold to British Aerospace, forming BAE Systems. The rest of GEC, mainly telecommunications equipment manufacturing, continued as Marconi Communications. After buying several US telecoms manufacturers at the top of the market, losses following the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 led to the restructuring in 2003 of Marconi plc into Marconi Corporation plc. In 2005, the company failed to secure any part of BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) programme; that same year, Ericsson acquired the bulk of the company, and what was left of the business was renamed Telent.
History
Early years (1886–88)
GEC had its origins in the G. Binswanger and Company, an electrical goods wholesaler established in London in the 1880s by a German-Jewish immigrant, Gustav Binswanger (later Gustav Byng).[1][2] In 1886, regarded as the year GEC was founded, Hugo Hirst – a fellow immigrant – joined Byng, and the company changed its name to The General Electric Apparatus Company (G. Binswanger).[2][3]
Their small business found early success with its unorthodox method of supplying electrical components over the counter. Hirst was an entrepreneurial salesman who saw the potential of electricity and was able to direct the standardisation of an industry in its infancy. He travelled across Europe with an eye for the latest products, and in 1887 the company published the first electrical catalogue of its kind.[2]
See also
- Aerospace industry in the United Kingdom
- GEC-Marconi scientist deaths conspiracy theory
- National Lift Tower – a lift test tower built by The Express Lift Company
Further reading
External links
- The History of the General Electric Company up to 1900 – Part 1 – GEC Review, Volume 14, No. 1, 1999
- The History of the General Electric Company up to 1900 – Part 2 – GEC Review, Volume 14, No. 2, 1999
- The Roots of GEC 1670 – 1999
- The former GEC Archives Collection – archived website
- Listen to the 1904 "GEC March"
References
- Julius Carlebach. Second Chance: Two Centuries of German-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom Mohr Siebeck, 1991^
- GEC History IPD Group, retrieved 5 June 2010^
- S. Roberts. Summary report on early corporate records of General Electric Company plc, electrical equipment manufacturers, London