WEBVTT - Rerun: GE Through World War II 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.600 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:17.440 job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.000 and I love all things tech and I am currently 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:25.840 vacationing in sunny Orlando, Florida. Hopefully it's sunny when I'm 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:30.319 down there. And yeah, we're going to continue our look 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:33.479 back on General Electric a k A. G E. So 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:37.400 yesterday we replayed an episode called the Founding of GE. 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:41.279 Today we are going to the second part. This one 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:45.360 is called g E Through World War Two. Then it 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:52.680 originally published on September four, two thousand nineteen. Enjoy. In 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.760 our last episode, I was talking about General Electric, and 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.800 I was really focusing on the origin of the company 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:04.680 and its first two decades of its existence. And over 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.800 the next few episodes, we're going to start picking up 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:10.160 the pace a bit and exploring the full history of 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.520 the company and why. In recent months, that is, as 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:17.840 of August twenty nineteen, some analysts have expressed concern for 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:22.320 the integrity of the company. This is not a new development. Actually, 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.400 GE has had some struggles over the last decade or so, 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:31.120 but we haven't gotten there yet. We're still pretty early 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:33.640 on in its history, and there's a lot I could 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:37.160 talk about, including advances in some of the basic technology 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.520 that GE was built off of. For example, in nineteen 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:46.160 of physicists and chemist named Irving Langmuir proved that by 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:50.320 filling lightbulbs within inert gas like are Gone, it would 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:54.080 not only extend the useful life of the tungusten filaments 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:57.800 inside the lightbulb that's the part that actually lights up 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:00.040 in a light bulb, but it would also for the 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.920 the inside of the light bulb from turning black as 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:06.520 it got an internal coding of what's essentially soot from 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:11.640 the tungsten. Langmuir would make numerous contributions to science and 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.440 would ultimately receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in nineteen 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:19.400 thirty two, though that wasn't for light bulbs anyway. Another 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:24.040 thing that happened in ninet was that Charles Coffin, who 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.839 had been president of the company, would become General Electrics 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:32.400 first chairman of the board of directors. Edwin Wilbur Rice, 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:36.000 who had studied under Alahu Thompson at Central High School 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.160 in Philadelphia and who had worked for General Electrics since 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.760 the very beginning of the company became the new president 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.720 of GE. Rice had more than a hundred patents to 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.240 his name and had a strong hand in guiding how 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:53.160 General Electrics manufacturing facilities operated. He was one of the 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:57.480 founders for gees Research Laboratory. Not a bad pick for 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:02.079 president of the company, someone who could wreck the operational aspects. 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:08.200 Under Rice, General Electric continued to expand its business and 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:12.520 it acquired other companies as well as experiencing growth on 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:17.120 its own. In nineteen eighteen, for example, GE acquired the 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:22.640 Pacific Electric Heating Company and the Hues Electric Heating Company, 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.880 so GE then formed a new division within the company 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:30.639 itself called Edison Electric Appliance Company. Around that same time, 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.760 GE also acquired the Trumbull Electric Company, which created and 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:40.080 supplied parts related to the electric utility industry such as switchboards. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.920 So really still investing in that world, and to be fair, 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.920 electricity and infrastructure was still very slowly rolling out across 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.520 the United States, and GE had a very large hand 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:56.080 in that. In nineteen nineteen, General Electric became one of 0:03:56.120 --> 0:04:00.760 the founding companies to create the Radio Corporation of America 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:03.600 or our c A, and I covered this in the 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:08.000 episodes I did about our CIA. So the super short 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.640 version of this is that leading up to World War One, 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:16.640 the United States military pretty much commondered the radio communications 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:20.880 industry in the US. Now, at that time, radio stations 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:26.560 weren't broadcasting entertainment and news and sound over to radios. 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.640 There were no consumer radios. This was really all about 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.760 sending wireless telegrams, so most transmissions were just limited to 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:39.200 Morse code. Now, there were a few early radio broadcast 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:43.720 pioneers around this time as well, but it was very limited. Now. 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.360 The problem was, at least from the US military perspective, 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:52.560 that many of these communications stations, these radio transmitters were 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.680 actually owned and operated by companies that were from outside 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:00.800 the United States, and the First World War was driving 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.120 home how important it was to have a secure communications 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:08.839 network within your own borders. So the US military, namely 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:12.400 the the U. S. Navy, ultimately rested control of those 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:16.760 transmission stations away from foreign companies and then used them 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:21.840 for wartime communications for official military communications. But once the 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.080 war was over, the government needed to figure out what 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.400 to do with all these transmission stations, So rather than 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.880 operate them as government owned entities, the government reached out 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:39.039 to several companies US companies, including General Electric and also Westinghouse, A, 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.760 T and T, and the United Fruit Company. Yeah, I'll 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:45.560 have to do an episode about the United Fruit Company 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:50.920 at some point. It's a pretty interesting and controversial story. Anyway. 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.640 It was this group that would form our c A, 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.040 with each group partner in the group holding a certain 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.479 percentage of the ownership up of our ci A. General 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.599 Electric held the majority. Steak didn't hold a fifty steak. 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.560 It was more like, but it held more interest in 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:14.640 our Cier than any other party did. In I saw, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.680 we saw something pretty darn cool. Well I didn't, I 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.720 wasn't born yet, but the world in general saw something 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:26.040 pretty cool. In built a supercharger for an airplane. So 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.360 there was an engineer named Sanford Moss who came up 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:33.480 with this idea. He had this hypothesis that fuel would 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:37.279 burn better in a chamber with compressed air. It would 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:41.479 actually produce more energy, would be a greater energy output 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.200 with compressed air inside the chamber. And it turned out 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.960 that this hypothesis was correct, and so using that knowledge, 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:53.120 he designed what was called a supercharger to produce a 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.280 lot more power in an engine. Now, a plane with 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:59.720 one of those superchargers would set an altitude record at 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:04.159 the time, and it reached a new altitude of forty thousand, 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:08.440 eight hundred feet or about twelve thousand four dreds. Obviously, 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.200 we've left that way behind now, but at the time 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.080 that was a significant achievement. In nineteen twenty two, g 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:19.160 S own radio station in Schenectady, New York with the 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:23.360 identity of w g Y would go on the air. 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:28.480 The station had a fifteen hundred what transmitter. Now today 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.000 that station is owned by the company I work for 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:35.360 my Heart Media. Fun little fact, though. It has also 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.640 changed a bit since nineteen twenty two. For example, the 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:43.160 transmitter today is at fifty thousand watts, so that's a 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:47.640 big change, and the wattage pretty much determines how far 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.080 the transmissions can go. It gets a little more complicated 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.120 than that, but that's a general rule of thumb. Also, 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:58.080 in nineteen twenty two, Rice would step down as president 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.280 of the company and a guy named Gerald Swope became 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.520 the new president of GE and pushed the company to 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.200 produce more consumer appliances. So this is really the era 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:12.400 where g E started to seriously get into the consumer 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:18.040 appliance manufacturing business, stuff like refrigerators and electric stoves. So 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.800 while GE had made a few consumer products over the 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:25.080 previous twenty years, it hadn't really seriously delved into that market. 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.440 And then in the nineteen twenties that all changed. GE 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:32.320 branded appliances became more and more common. So who was 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:37.400 this Swope fellow? Well, unlike Rice, he wasn't at General 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.040 Electric at the very start of the company, and technically 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.040 Rice was actually in the precursor company. He had worked 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:50.240 for the Thompson Houston Electric company that preceded General Electric. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.480 But Swope wasn't like that. Nope, Swope was a newcomer. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:58.440 He originally joined g E in eight three, one whole 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:03.120 year after the company was founded. Johnny come lately, Okay, 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.320 I'm being a bit cheeky. Swope had joined the company 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:08.800 as a helper while he was still in school. It's 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.679 sort of like a gopher, someone who did whatever it 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.360 was that needed doing at any given time. His starting 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:19.320 salary back then was an entire dollar a day of 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.439 princely some presumably he was making a bit more than 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.360 that by the time he took on the role of 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.719 company president in nineteen twenty two, and I don't mean 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:32.120 to suggest his employment and GE was unbroken from eighteen 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:34.800 ninety three to nineteen twenty two. That was not the case. 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.160 He left GE, he was attending m I T. He 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.400 graduated from m I T with a degree in electrical engineering, 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:44.640 and then he took on a job for Western Electric, 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.480 which is a company that's even older than GE. Swope 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:52.040 had also served on the United States War Department General 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:56.080 Staff during World War One. He aided in the procurement 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:00.480 and supply operations for the army. Charles Coffin brought Swope 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:04.120 back over to the fold at G in nineteen nineteen. 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.480 Now as the president of GE, Swope would do more 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:11.439 than just push the company into manufacturing more consumer appliances. 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:16.360 He was also concerned about employee benefits. Under his leadership, 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.520 General Electric began to implement employee benefit programs such as 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:25.800 voluntary unemployment insurance, profit sharing programs, and a cost of 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:30.079 living wage adjustment program. Swope would serve as the president 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:33.720 of the company twice in fact, and his first run 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:38.160 that would stretch from nineteen twenty two to nineteen forty, 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:41.920 meaning that Swope also led the company as the entire 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:46.240 world went through the Great Depression, a challenging time for everybody. 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.280 And just to stick with this for a second, I 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:52.160 should explain who Swope's successor was and why Swope would 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.840 return to serve as president a second time, because generally 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:58.920 when you hear that someone left as president and then 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.240 had to come back as president, it sounds like something 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.640 really wrong happened in the interim. That's not exactly the case. 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:11.439 So in nineteen forty, Gerard Swope retired and Charles E. Wilson, 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.240 who had first started working for ge UH specifically a 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:18.640 g E subsidiary, when he was twelve years old, and 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:20.560 had been with a company pretty much ever since. He 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:24.800 actually completed his education by taking night courses. Wilson was 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.520 promoted to president in nineteen forty and he led the 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.680 company for about two and a half years, but then 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:36.120 a different president called on him. That president was Franklin 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.960 Delano Roosevelt, who wanted Wilson to join the War Production 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.760 Board as vice chairman. The United States had entered World 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.840 War Two in December of nineteen forty one, and there 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:50.640 was a pressing need to devote manufacturing capabilities towards producing 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.800 equipment and weapons for American soldiers. Wilson responded to the 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:59.120 request and he left General Electric, so Gerard Swope came 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:01.959 out of retirement and once again led the company until 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:06.000 nineteen forty five and World War Two's end. At that point, 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.520 Wilson returned to GE and resumed his role as president 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.439 of the company for another five years. Now, the reason 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:16.040 I decided to follow that particular trail and kind of 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:19.360 move away from the timeline for a second was again 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.800 to illustrate how important General Electrics business had become. It 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:27.959 was integral to the modernization of the United States, and 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:33.119 gees manufacturing facilities were formidable both for their industrial businesses 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.840 and consumer appliance businesses. No wonder the President looked to 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:41.560 GE for help in manufacturing and acquisitions for wartime production. Okay, 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:43.400 so let's get back to the timeline and learn what 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.960 GE was doing during all those years. One note I 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:51.560 saw pop up on several sites was that in nineteen 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:55.040 twenty four, g E opted to exit the utilities business 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.800 because of antitrust concerns from the U. S. Government. But 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:03.559 despite my certain change, I couldn't find any other information 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:07.319 on that, and I just saw essentially the same timeline 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:11.120 popping up on multiple websites. So that suggested to me 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:15.040 that they were all pulling from a single common source. Now, 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.000 this does not mean that the information is wrong. It 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:20.480 might be right, and I just wasn't able to find 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:24.480 corroborating evidence of it. But because I couldn't find any 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:29.079 confirmation outside that list, I got a little leery of it. 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:33.000 So I'm including this whole story in this podcast simply 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:35.560 to point out that it can be important to look 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:40.800 for those corroborating sources that really indicate that you're looking 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.080 at true information and you're not just looking at somebody's 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:49.360 list that is unsupported and other people have just copied 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:51.480 that exact, exact same list and put it up on 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.480 their own websites. That does happen. It happens a lot, 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.240 So you'll actually find a lot of plagiarism out there 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.400 on the Internet. You'll be looking at us source for information. 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:03.439 You'll be reading up on a paragraph and you think, 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:05.199 all right, that's interesting, let's see if I can find 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.880 any more data about this, and you'll do a search 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.360 and a different website will pop up. You start reading 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:13.800 that and you think, well, this sounds really familiar, and 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.040 if you put the side by side, you realize this 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:22.640 is exact exactly the same language, and there's no indication that, uh, 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:24.400 that it was done on the up and up. Now, 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:28.360 occasionally someone will write a piece and it will all 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:31.320 be agreed upon that that piece will be distributed to 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.000 different outlets. But a lot of times people are just 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:38.520 taking whatever they think is cool or interesting or will 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:40.400 drive traffic, and they'll just put it up on their 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.800 site without asking. That's not cool. Anyway, back to GE, 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:47.360 there were a couple of big important events that definitely 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.560 happened in nineteen twenty four. Um, whether GE got the 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.600 utilities business because of antitrust issues, I can't speak to 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.280 because I couldn't find anything about it. But stuff that 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.320 got started or happened in nineteen why for, there were 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.520 some important things. One of those was a lawsuit that 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:05.760 would go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Now, 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:09.360 let me explain. In the United States, GE held the 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.640 patents for pretty much all the basic components for the 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.400 light bulb. That is, they had a patent on the 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.600 tungsten filament in the gas filled bulb and all this 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:23.000 other stuff. Westinghouse had entered into a licensing agreement with 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:27.360 GE so that Westinghouse could produce and more importantly, sell 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.520 light bulbs. In return, GE said that Westinghouse would have 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:34.640 to set its prices for light bulbs according to g 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.400 e s direction, and that it would have to follow 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:40.440 certain quotas. In other words, g was using its power 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.680 to say, you can sell lightbulbs based on our designs, 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.000 but they have to be at this price, and you 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.160 can't make more than x number of them because that 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.920 would eat into our own profits. And GE said, we 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:56.120 can change our our price at any time for any reason. 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.120 And that's really the issue that went to court. Now, 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.360 what the courts would all likely find, and the Supreme 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:05.000 Court decision would come down in nine six, is that 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.600 typically if you license out a patent, if you've invented 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.120 something and you've got the patent for your invention and 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:16.720 someone asks to license your invention, typically you cannot dictate 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:22.000 a price for a product made from your patented invention. However, 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.680 in this case, GE had not just licensed out the 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.680 right to manufacture light bulbs and had also licensed out 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:33.480 the right to sell light bulbs, and that meant GE 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.320 could determine other things like the selling price of the 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.440 light bulb. At least, this is what the court found 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.560 and This is one of the more controversial business related 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.880 decisions made by the Supreme Court. It's been challenged several 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.080 times and upheld a few times, sometimes with just a 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.320 split court decision like split right down the middle. It 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.120 means that you could potentially patent and invention and then 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.400 not only licensed it out to other entities, but you 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.400 can dictate at what price those entities could sell your invention. 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.360 So you could in theory produce your own products and 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:06.359 sell them for a lower cost than your competitors could 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:10.320 because of your demands, and thus you are undercutting them 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:14.040 while you're simultaneously licensing your invention to them. It's pretty 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.240 cut throat stuff. Now, there are limitations on this. The 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.359 Supreme Court essentially said patent holders can only do this 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:24.439 if they themselves are also manufacturing the product. So you 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.919 couldn't just come up with a cool invention, get it patented, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.399 and then just sit on that patent and wait for 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:32.639 people to license your ideas and then tell them how 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.199 much they have to sell the product for. That's off limits. 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.560 You have to actually be actively using that patent yourself, 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:41.480 so patent trolls would not be able to do this. 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.359 But again it shows how gees business would end up 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.439 shaping the world around it. I've got a lot more 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:50.640 to say about General Electric, but before I get to that, 0:17:50.720 --> 0:18:00.760 let's take a quick break. Early or I alluded to 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:03.199 the fact that a couple of big things happened in 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:06.679 nineteen four and they both had to do with lightbulbs. 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:12.000 And that's ironic because this next big thing was really shady. 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.880 Executives from g E attended a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.520 That meeting was also attended by representatives of companies like 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:24.199 Phillips and the company de Lump and Oserum. All of 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.080 these are light bulb manufacturers, or were at the time. 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.159 They signed a document that was titled Convention for the 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:36.840 Development and Progress of the International Incandescent Electric Lamp Industry. 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:42.920 But the agreement has a more sinister nickname, the Phoebus Cartel. Now, 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.960 Phoebus is another name for Apollo, the god of the Sun, 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.639 So that's fun. But what this group was doing was 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:55.280 working out a global agreement about the manufacture and sale 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.800 and design of light bulbs, and that agreement divided up 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.439 the world into read's assigned to the various members of 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:05.920 the cartel. Each member would have its own region to 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.760 lord over, and it would have a quota that it 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.760 was supposed to stay below in order to meet manufacturing 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.000 needs and to meet the needs of all the members 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:18.160 at the cartel. But more than that, the group actually 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.359 determined that the useful life of a light bulb should 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:27.560 be one thousand hours. They were collectively agreeing to limit 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:32.399 a lightbulb's lifespan. And this is called planned obsolescence, and 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:37.200 it's a pretty shifty way to ensure continued success. Essentially, 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.119 it's when a company builds a product that is only 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.439 supposed to last a certain amount of time, and it 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:46.639 comes along with the expectation that the customer who buys 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.040 your product is going to go out and buy a 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:54.000 new version of the thing that just broke. So these 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.840 companies could make better light bulbs. In fact, they had 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.200 already done that. The average light bulb lifespan in n 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:06.320 was already twenty five hundred hours, so two point five 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.199 times as long. Now they were going to work to 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.840 reduce that lifespan in order to dram up more business. 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.160 Lightbulbs burned out faster, people have to go back and 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.280 buy more lightbulbs. It was making their own business by 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:23.359 making the products worse in a way, and because it 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.560 would be an agreement across multiple companies around the globe, 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:32.640 there'd be nowhere else to go. Insert maniacal laugh here. Interestingly, 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:37.919 though GE was crucial to forming this cartel, it was 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:41.840 part of the meeting that created it. GE itself was 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.720 not a member of the cartel. It did, however, own 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:49.520 interests in nearly all of the companies that were members 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:52.679 of the cartel, and it did have one subsidiary, a 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.720 British subsidiary called International General Electric that was part of 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:00.040 the cartel, but the overall company was not cut and 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.520 He's in the cartel had to send light bulbs to 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.960 a testing facility in Switzerland to make certain they were 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:09.600 manufacturing bulbs with the right lifespan. And like I said, 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:12.359 they were given those strict quotas. If you sold more 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.000 than your quota allowed, you would get fined. You would 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:18.680 also get fined if the light bulbs you made didn't 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:23.359 last long enough, or worse, lasted too long. This really 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.240 did happen, and the plan was for the agreement to 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:29.359 last until nineteen fifty five, so it was a thirty 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:33.600 year agreement. The only reason that didn't actually happen was 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.640 because of a little thing called World War Two. But yeah, 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:38.639 that's a heck of a thing to learn about. And 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:42.320 g E engineers really did work on ways to decrease 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:46.760 the useful life of light bulbs for various products, including flashlights. 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.479 They were saying, well, you know, flashlight flash bulbs, they 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:54.879 last three hole changes of batteries. Right now, let's reduce that. 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:57.080 They got it down so that the light bulbs would 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:01.320 only last two whole sets of batteries, and then eventually 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.240 got to a point where the lightbulbs lifespan was about 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:07.360 the same length as the useful lifespan of a set 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:14.000 of batteries. That's the way progress works, I guess anyway. Uh, 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:16.919 it's a it's a heck of a thing to read about, 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:18.960 and it it does kind of stink, But I get 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:21.800 it from a sales perspective. I mean, if Willie Wonka 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.800 had actually made an everlasting gob stopper, he'd only have 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.480 to sell one to each kid, and then he would 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.800 have innovated himself out of business. He would never sell anymore. 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:35.720 Why would he? Everyone already has one and it never 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:40.640 gets smaller. That that's that's inventing yourself out of business. 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:44.359 But still, there's something particularly sinister about a company or 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:48.680 group of companies that agree to build into their products 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:51.679 the intent for those products to stop working after a 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.600 certain amount of time, forcing people to go and buy 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:58.560 a new one. It's not super cool. On a less 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:02.800 conspiratorial note, in nineteen twenty seven, g E was one 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:06.760 of a few companies to demonstrate a live TV broadcast. 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.119 Now earlier in nineteen a T and T had to 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:14.000 demonstrated a long distance broadcast of its own. GEES claim 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.119 is that their demonstration was the first to broadcast to 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:21.160 a television in an actual home, as opposed to a 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:25.320 demonstration theater or a showroom. The broadcast came from GES 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:29.040 radio station w g Y, and the TV was in 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:32.760 a home located in Schenectady, New York, and GEES headquarters. 0:23:33.040 --> 0:23:37.440 The television was not an electric electronic television that had 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:41.240 just recently been pioneered by Filo Farnsworth that same year. 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.199 This was actually a mechanical television, meaning there were actual 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:48.920 moving parts inside the television. But I've talked about that 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:52.199 in several earlier episodes of Tech Stuff, so I'm just 0:23:52.200 --> 0:23:56.480 gonna move along here. In nineteen twenty eight, the Radio 0:23:56.520 --> 0:23:59.840 Corporation of America, in which I remember g E OH 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:04.400 owned a large steak created the NBC networks. Now technically 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.600 they were two networks of affiliates, so you had two 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:12.560 NBC networks. There was NBC Red and NBC Blue, so 0:24:12.640 --> 0:24:16.360 you could say GE had partial ownership of NBC at 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:19.800 this time, though that wouldn't last for very long for 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:23.560 the time being. That's because in nineteen thirty, the US 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:27.639 government began to investigate GE, Westinghouse and our CIA for 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:33.600 monopolistic practices. The antitrust investigation was followed by formal charges 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:38.160 and a long period of negotiation, and ultimately the parties 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:42.240 agreed to our c A becoming its own incorporated company 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:46.240 and the various partners, including GE, would divest themselves of 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:49.480 their shares in our CIA. In addition, g E and 0:24:49.520 --> 0:24:52.359 Westinghouse had to agree to stay out of the radio 0:24:52.440 --> 0:24:55.560 broadcast business for two and a half years in order 0:24:55.640 --> 0:24:57.720 to give our CIA a chance to stand on its own. 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:00.520 And boy how they did it ever, But that's covered 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:03.840 in other episodes I did not too long ago. We'll 0:25:03.840 --> 0:25:07.560 get back to both NBC and r c A later 0:25:07.600 --> 0:25:11.000