Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in iHeart Radio and I Love all
Speaker 1: things tech. And we are continuing our journey through the
Speaker 1: history of General Electric or GE, a company that has
Speaker 1: encountered some pretty significant challenges over the last decade or so. Now.
Speaker 1: In our first two episodes, I went through the founding
Speaker 1: of GE and then made my way all the way
Speaker 1: up through World War Two, and I talked about how
Speaker 1: some of the top level executives of the company were
Speaker 1: called upon by the US government to serve in wartime
Speaker 1: government positions to help the US meet the needs of
Speaker 1: supplying the military with the equipment necessary to fight the war.
Speaker 1: I also talked about how g E continued to grow
Speaker 1: as a company, building on new departments and divisions and
Speaker 1: diversifying the company's businesses. And I ended the last episode
Speaker 1: by talking about a court case that determined g E
Speaker 1: was being anti competitive by leveraging patents in order to
Speaker 1: act as an effective monopoly when it came to manufacturing
Speaker 1: light bulbs. Now we're almost up to nineteen fifty and
Speaker 1: it's time to get out of this world. The one
Speaker 1: thing I want to mention before we get into the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties is that in nineteen forty six a scientist
Speaker 1: at GE named Vincent Schaefer developed the process of cloud seating.
Speaker 1: And the idea is pretty elegant but has long been
Speaker 1: a subject of scientific dispute. So here's the process. It
Speaker 1: involves distributing tiny particles into clouds in an effort to
Speaker 1: make it rain. And the thought is that these particles
Speaker 1: will act as nucleic sites for rain drops to form.
Speaker 1: When the raindrops get large enough, they have enough weight
Speaker 1: to fall to Earth. And so that is the general
Speaker 1: thought behind cloud seating. It's been practiced ever since, but
Speaker 1: there have been many questions over whether or not cloud
Speaker 1: seating actually works. Sometimes it would rain, sometimes it wouldn't,
Speaker 1: And if it did rain, is there any way to
Speaker 1: be sure that it was the cloud seeding that actually
Speaker 1: made the difference. I mean, you had to have a
Speaker 1: cloud there in the first place. You couldn't just manufacture
Speaker 1: a cloud. Experiments and labs suggested that it should work,
Speaker 1: but the natural world is very different from the controlled
Speaker 1: conditions of a lab environment. It didn't help that many
Speaker 1: of our measuring instruments lacked the precision to detect very
Speaker 1: small raindrops, so you couldn't really monitor to see if
Speaker 1: it was actually doing what it was supposed to do.
Speaker 1: An experiment in two thousand eighteen suggests that cloud seating
Speaker 1: does in fact work, at least to some extent. But
Speaker 1: there's another question that's still open, which is does cloud
Speaker 1: seeding make economic sense? Does the amount of water produced
Speaker 1: by rainfall justify the cost of flying aircraft up and
Speaker 1: distributing the particles in the first place, Because it may
Speaker 1: very well work, but it might not work well enough
Speaker 1: to make sense from a financial perspective. I just find
Speaker 1: it fascinating that we've essentially been doing this for seventy
Speaker 1: years and we still don't know if we should be
Speaker 1: doing it now. I can certainly see why cloud seating
Speaker 1: companies feel we should be doing it. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: their business. But the jury is still technically out over
Speaker 1: whether or not it makes sense, and there's still a
Speaker 1: little bit debate on whether or not it really truly works,
Speaker 1: or if it works in enough conditions for it to
Speaker 1: be reasonable. Now in Ge made the first two door
Speaker 1: refrigerator freezer combo. And I only mentioned it here because
Speaker 1: I think it's cool. That's a pun. Now we're up
Speaker 1: to the nineteen fifties. So in nineteen fifty one g
Speaker 1: E built a new jet engine called the J seven nine.
Speaker 1: And here's an interesting historical note. When engineers tested the
Speaker 1: J seven nine, which had variable statures, the efficiency ratings
Speaker 1: were so high that the engineers thought their instruments were malfunctioning.
Speaker 1: There's no way we're getting this level of energy efficiency
Speaker 1: out of this thing. But then that raises a question
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, what is a statter? What
Speaker 1: does that actually mean? Well, the name gives you a hint. Statter, stationary,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So in jet engines, you have
Speaker 1: fan blades that rotate. Those are rotors, and you had
Speaker 1: fan blades that hold in place. Those are called statters.
Speaker 1: And the purpose of this combination is to both draw
Speaker 1: air into the engine and to compress that air before
Speaker 1: it enters into the combustion chamber. The adjustable status meant
Speaker 1: that the engine could be finely tuned to produce higher
Speaker 1: compressor pressures and to produce more usable energy as opposed
Speaker 1: to waste heat. When you're actually burning fuel. In n
Speaker 1: GE Research Laboratory, scientists named Tracy Hall announced that his
Speaker 1: team had discovered a way to create synthetic diamond in
Speaker 1: the lab. Halls team used a process involving high pressure
Speaker 1: high temperature or hp HT. They were successful in producing
Speaker 1: synthetic diamonds on December sixteenth, nineteen fifty four. Now, other
Speaker 1: teams were using different methods to create diamonds of in
Speaker 1: other companies as well, but it was Hall's efforts that
Speaker 1: would receive the credit for designing the first reliable, reproducible
Speaker 1: methodology to create commercially viable synthetic diamonds. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of qualifiers there because there were people who
Speaker 1: were working on different methodologies and they were also producing diamonds,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't considered to be as reliable nor as
Speaker 1: viable for a commercial use. And these were not diamonds
Speaker 1: meant to adorn engagement rings or other jewelry. For one,
Speaker 1: they were brownish in color, so they weren't terribly attractive.
Speaker 1: They also were very very tiny. The largest diamond they
Speaker 1: produced in that early batch measured point one five millimeters across,
Speaker 1: so these were not large stones. More importantly, this purpose
Speaker 1: would be put to commercial uses. In fact, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be until the nineteen seventies that scientists would actually be
Speaker 1: able to create diamonds of sufficient quality and clarity that
Speaker 1: they could be used in the gem industry. And even
Speaker 1: then the process was so labor intensive and so expensive
Speaker 1: it was not economically feasible to create synthetic diamonds for
Speaker 1: decorative purposes. The cost of the synthetic diamond would be
Speaker 1: so high that would actually be cheaper for you to
Speaker 1: go out and buy a ring with a natural diamond
Speaker 1: on it. Also, the whole topic of diamonds is one
Speaker 1: that I find particularly upsetting, But that's a that's a
Speaker 1: topic for a totally different podcast. So how did they
Speaker 1: make synthetic diamonds? Well, I'm sure most of you know,
Speaker 1: diamonds are a form of carbon. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: crystalline form of carbon. You've gotta crystalline structure where you
Speaker 1: have a carbon atom that's surrounded by four other carbon
Speaker 1: atoms and they're all connected to each other through strong
Speaker 1: covalent bonds. And diamonds are incredibly hard. They are the
Speaker 1: hardest natural substance we found so far. They also have
Speaker 1: a lot of different industrial uses. They can operate at
Speaker 1: high temperatures where they can hold stiff firm. At high temperatures,
Speaker 1: they don't really operate at all. They're just minerals, but
Speaker 1: they hold together well at high temperatures. So you put
Speaker 1: it on something like a high speed cutting tool, and
Speaker 1: the hardness combined with the fact that it's not going
Speaker 1: to break down at high temperatures, means you can run
Speaker 1: that very high RPMs and start cutting through stuff pretty well.
Speaker 1: In nature, diamonds form as carbon is compressed at very
Speaker 1: high temperatures over a very long time, and if it
Speaker 1: weren't for stuff like volcanoes, we probably never would have
Speaker 1: found the things because they tend to form in the
Speaker 1: Earth's mantle, which is not easy to get to. They
Speaker 1: they these zone where they form is about a hundred
Speaker 1: miles beneath the surface of the Earth. That's far deeper
Speaker 1: than we've ever drilled. Hall's lab used a belt press,
Speaker 1: and this press could exert more than ten giga pascals
Speaker 1: of pressure. A pascal is a unit of measurement for pressure,
Speaker 1: and it equates to a Newton per square meter. Standard
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure is about one d one point three to
Speaker 1: five kilo pascals, So a giga pascal is one billion pascals.
Speaker 1: Ten giga pascals would be ten billion pascals, so that's
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure. G would actually put it in
Speaker 1: another way for those of us who don't use you know,
Speaker 1: scientific notation for everything. They said, the press could exert
Speaker 1: one point five million pounds per square inch of pressure,
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's just a whole lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: And plus it would operate at a very high temperature.
Speaker 1: It would be heated to a temperature of more than
Speaker 1: three thousand six d fifty degrees fahrenheit or two thousand
Speaker 1: ten degrees celsius. This press pushed against a mixture of graphite,
Speaker 1: which is another form of carbon, and the graphite would
Speaker 1: be dissolved in a catalyst metal and catalyst metals could
Speaker 1: include stuff like nickel or iron. A catalyst in a
Speaker 1: chemical reaction is something that facilitates and speeds up the
Speaker 1: chemical reaction. So in this case, and meant that we
Speaker 1: didn't have to wait millions of years for synthetic diamonds
Speaker 1: to form, instead talk about twenty minutes. The largest of
Speaker 1: those diamonds, like I said, was point one five millimeters across,
Speaker 1: so pretty darn tiny. The following year, g E introduced
Speaker 1: hermetically sealed relays. These are electronic components that could be
Speaker 1: used in lots of different applications that otherwise might be
Speaker 1: sensitive to their environments, particularly in stuff like high altitude
Speaker 1: airplanes and aerospace applications, and variations of these components would
Speaker 1: be used throughout the next few decades in those particular applications.
Speaker 1: It's just one early example of how GE would become
Speaker 1: an important part of the space race, which was just
Speaker 1: heating up in the nineteen fifties between the United States
Speaker 1: and the then Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the company continued to
Speaker 1: expand its consumer product line. It had introduced a toaster
Speaker 1: decades earlier, but in nineteen fifty six it introduced the
Speaker 1: toaster oven. Specifically, it was one called the tree toast
Speaker 1: our oven, and it's adorable. You should look up a
Speaker 1: picture of it. That same year, GE built a commercial
Speaker 1: jet engine based off the J seventy nine design, which
Speaker 1: was intended for military aircraft that wasn't meant to be
Speaker 1: for commercial aircraft. So this new engine, which had the
Speaker 1: designation c J eight oh five, would mark General Electrics
Speaker 1: entry into the commercial jet engine business. So now they
Speaker 1: were building jet engines not just for the U. S. Military,
Speaker 1: but also for companies like Boeing and other companies were
Speaker 1: creating aircraft. Seven would be a really big year for GE.
Speaker 1: The company secured a contract with the United States Air
Speaker 1: Force to provide the engine for an experimental supersonic aircraft,
Speaker 1: the x B seventy Valkyrie. Now the X in aircraft
Speaker 1: names is a big tip off that that's an experimental prototype.
Speaker 1: You'll often see X as part of the designation at
Speaker 1: the beginning of various aircraft that usually means experimental. The engine,
Speaker 1: called d J ninety three, was capable of producing enough
Speaker 1: thrust to propel the experimental aircraft to three times the
Speaker 1: speed of sound, and it would travel an altitude of
Speaker 1: seventy thousand feet or about twenty one meters. Not the time,
Speaker 1: the thinking was that the greatest threat to bombers were
Speaker 1: intercept aircraft. So if you could fly high enough and
Speaker 1: fast enough, you wouldn't have to worry about that. No
Speaker 1: one would ever be able to get a bead on you.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't be able to to track you and fire
Speaker 1: on you at that speed and at that altitude. So
Speaker 1: the Valkyrie would be safe against tip called defenses. However,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union was developing service to air missile technology
Speaker 1: and that started to bring into question whether or not
Speaker 1: the Valkyrie would be equally as effective against that sort
Speaker 1: of defense system. And one of the ways to get
Speaker 1: around that would be to fly the Valkyrie at lower altitudes,
Speaker 1: where it could fly beneath radar. But if you did that,
Speaker 1: you also had to fly slower. You couldn't fly at
Speaker 1: the same mock three speed at lower altitudes. That meant
Speaker 1: that the bomber would be flying lower and slower than
Speaker 1: it was designed to do, and it would be no
Speaker 1: more effective than other bombers that were already in use
Speaker 1: at that time, and it was more expensive. So with
Speaker 1: all of those considerations stacked against the Valkyrie, the ultimate
Speaker 1: decision was not to go into production and build those
Speaker 1: out as a production model, so it just remained an
Speaker 1: experimental prototype. But it is super cool to look at.
Speaker 1: If you ever want to look at a picture of
Speaker 1: a x B said in the Valcrie, they're pretty neat looking.
Speaker 1: Something else that happened in nineteen seven was that General
Speaker 1: Electric constructed a nuclear power plant in Alameda County California,
Speaker 1: and it was the first nuclear reactor to be connected
Speaker 1: to a commercial electricity grid. In other words, General Electric
Speaker 1: was able to produce electricity that would go to average
Speaker 1: citizens over an Alameda County. And I've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about how nuclear power plants work, I'll just give
Speaker 1: a very very high level rundown. So you have a
Speaker 1: nuclear material that undergoes nuclear decay, and as part of
Speaker 1: that process, it releases subatomic particles, typically neutrons, and those
Speaker 1: neutrons collide with other atoms of that same nuclear material.
Speaker 1: This is your fuel, and when they collide with those
Speaker 1: other atoms, it initiates a chain reaction. Those atoms then
Speaker 1: go undergo radioactive decay and they release neutrons and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. So if there's enough thistle material,
Speaker 1: that is material that can split apart in the few will,
Speaker 1: this reaction can be sustained until the amount of fuel
Speaker 1: dips below critical levels, in which case you start to
Speaker 1: have fewer and fewer reactions and you've spent the nuclear fuel.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that all the nuclear radiation stuff is gone,
Speaker 1: far from it, but it's no longer producing the reactions
Speaker 1: at the level you need to sustain that reaction indefinitely.
Speaker 1: This is a nuclear power plant. Now, the concentration of
Speaker 1: nuclear material is really high where that reaction starts to
Speaker 1: pick up speed over and over and over again, and
Speaker 1: this happens in the blink of an eye. Then you
Speaker 1: can set off a much more explosive chain reaction. In
Speaker 1: that case you have a nuclear bomb rather than a
Speaker 1: power plant, and that that concentration is key there. That's
Speaker 1: why you'll hear stories about how how much UH uranium
Speaker 1: you would need for a nuclear power plant versus one
Speaker 1: for you know, refined uranium for a nuclear bomb. Now,
Speaker 1: this reaction produces a lot of heat, and it's the
Speaker 1: heat that's the key for these nuclear power plants. That heat,
Speaker 1: usually through a paired system of pipes, transfers to a boiler,
Speaker 1: and the water in the boiler boils into steam, and
Speaker 1: that steam then turns turbines which generate electricity. So a
Speaker 1: nuclear power plant is, if you think about it, really
Speaker 1: just a way to boil water, really fast and really efficiently.
Speaker 1: Cold power plants also boil water, but obviously they do
Speaker 1: it through combustion rather than through a nuclear reaction. So
Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me is that the the part
Speaker 1: that generates the heat is different, but the end result
Speaker 1: is very much the same in the sense that you're
Speaker 1: boiling water to create steam to turn turbines to generate electricity. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll not go down the nuclear power rabbit hole because
Speaker 1: there's much more to talk about just with general electric
Speaker 1: But if you want to learn more about nuclear power plants,
Speaker 1: do a quick search over at text of podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where we have an archive of all of our
Speaker 1: past episodes. You can also learn the difference between fission
Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, which are what we use today, and fusion
Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, which we hope we can make feasible in
Speaker 1: the near future. We have done fusion reactions already, but
Speaker 1: the question is can you make that sustainable? Can you
Speaker 1: make it economically feasible. That's a question that we have
Speaker 1: not yet answered, but if we are able to do it,
Speaker 1: it could transform the world anyway. The ge facility, which
Speaker 1: was called the Valacitos Nuclear Center, it still exists, uh.
Speaker 1: It was only an active power plant until nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: At that point, the federal government told g E to
Speaker 1: shut it down, So the boiler reactor was shut down
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, but GE maintains the facility mainly
Speaker 1: for the purposes of testing an analysis, particularly testing radiated
Speaker 1: materials to see how long they remain at dangerous levels
Speaker 1: of radiation. For example, So if you have instruments or suits,
Speaker 1: things like that that would exist in a radiation radiation
Speaker 1: UH filled area, you want to know how long is
Speaker 1: that stuff going to be dangerous UM. That's just part
Speaker 1: of what they do now. A major part of that facility.
Speaker 1: UH One of the largest of the reactors on that
Speaker 1: site got shut down in ninety seven. It was still
Speaker 1: being used for research purposes, but not to generate electricity.
Speaker 1: Why was it shut down, Well, it was discovered that
Speaker 1: it had the unfortunate distinction of sitting nearly directly on
Speaker 1: top of a fault line. There was a legitimate concern
Speaker 1: over what might happen should an earthquake hit while the
Speaker 1: reactor was an operation. There is still a smaller reactor
Speaker 1: on the site that operates in the one kilowatt range,
Speaker 1: but that's the only one as far as I can tell. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: all the other reactors have been completely decommissioned to shut down.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot more to say about general electric
Speaker 1: but before I get into that. Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: The work out of GEES research Lab was pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties. You had the nuclear scientists building
Speaker 1: that first licensed power plant to provide electricity to a grid.
Speaker 1: You had synthetic diamonds, and you had Robert H. Windorf
Speaker 1: who created a substance called borazon in the lab. Borizon
Speaker 1: is is a man made substance. You don't find it
Speaker 1: in nature, but it's almost as hard as diamond and
Speaker 1: it can be used in temperatures much higher than even
Speaker 1: diamonds can be used in. Like diamonds will break down
Speaker 1: once you get over a certain temperature, but borazon can
Speaker 1: hold together longer. So it would also become a very
Speaker 1: useful component in industrial cutting tools for example. Now around
Speaker 1: the same time, a different group of engineers were building
Speaker 1: something perhaps a bit less lofty in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things, but that would be the humble electric can opener.
Speaker 1: G introduce is the first consumer electric can opener in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, and pet ownership has never been the
Speaker 1: same since. In nineteen fifty nine, g E introduced the
Speaker 1: halogen lamp. These work in a way very similar to
Speaker 1: incandescent lamps. There's a tungsten filament inside a very small bulb,
Speaker 1: and encasing the filament is a quartz envelope. Inside the
Speaker 1: envelope is a gas from the halogen group of gases.
Speaker 1: So this is different from what the kind of gas
Speaker 1: you would find in your typical incandescent bulb. The benefit
Speaker 1: of halogen gas is that it can combine with tungsten vapor.
Speaker 1: So when the tungsten filament heats up and it starts
Speaker 1: to give off light, it's also giving off tungsten vapor.
Speaker 1: You know, tungsten is essentially burning off of the filament.
Speaker 1: That vapor combines with the halogen gas and then it
Speaker 1: gets deposited back onto the tungsten filament, at least some
Speaker 1: of it does, so some of that vaporized tungsten gets returned.
Speaker 1: That actually helps ex in the useful life of the
Speaker 1: halogen lamp. Halogen lamps can produce a lot more light
Speaker 1: per unit of energy compared to an incandescent bulb. They
Speaker 1: also produce a lot more heat, and as someone who
Speaker 1: has sadly a few halogen lamp fixtures in his house,
Speaker 1: I can speak from experiences. Those things get real hot.
Speaker 1: Guys like you will burn your fingers. I know I
Speaker 1: have anyway. In nineteen sixty a device built by g
Speaker 1: E became the first man made object to be recovered
Speaker 1: after going into orbit around the Earth. It was code
Speaker 1: named by g E the r v X to a
Speaker 1: re entry vehicle that was part of the Discoverer thirteen satellite.
Speaker 1: The discovered thirteen satellite kind of set the stage for
Speaker 1: space based reconnaissance and spy missions. Now, granted, that was
Speaker 1: not the public facing part of the mission. Obviously, letting
Speaker 1: everyone know, hey, this is a spy satellite is not
Speaker 1: the best plan if you want to use it for
Speaker 1: you know, spy stuff. So there was a cover story,
Speaker 1: and the cover story was essentially that it was a
Speaker 1: science experiment, but in reality it was a classified mission
Speaker 1: that was overseen by both the Air Force and the
Speaker 1: c I A. G would go on to open up
Speaker 1: a space center in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one because they were getting more and more involved in
Speaker 1: building components for the space race. Also in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Jack Welch who joined g
Speaker 1: E as a chemical engineer. He'll be really important later,
Speaker 1: So remember that name, Jack Welch. We'll get back to it.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty two, scientists from GE would develop one of
Speaker 1: the first solid state lasers using semiconductors. Interestingly, scientists at
Speaker 1: IBM and over at M I T were independently doing
Speaker 1: the exact same thing, and all the parties pretty much
Speaker 1: cracked the problem right around the same time. This set
Speaker 1: off a bit of a patent rush, with GE beating
Speaker 1: IBM to the punch by a little more than a week.
Speaker 1: I just find it fascinating that the solid state laser
Speaker 1: was one of those things that multiple parties invented at
Speaker 1: around the same time, independently of each other. But to
Speaker 1: be fair, the stage had already been set with early
Speaker 1: work in masers and lasers, so these were not the
Speaker 1: first lasers. They were the first solid state ones. Solid
Speaker 1: state lasers would then find their way into numerous technologies
Speaker 1: and applications. Early on, scientists theorized that they could be
Speaker 1: incredibly useful in communications, but they would become so commonplace
Speaker 1: that we'd rely on them to play our tunes for us.
Speaker 1: Because the laser and stuff like CD players, DVD players,
Speaker 1: Blu ray players, those are all solid state lasers. So
Speaker 1: what was truly cutting edge technology in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: Is now so commonplace that you can go out and
Speaker 1: buy one and use it to frustrate your pets. You know,
Speaker 1: you can just go get a little key chain with
Speaker 1: a solid state laser on it. Um. But I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure back in nineteen sixty two, no one thought that
Speaker 1: that was going to be a few future possibility. D
Speaker 1: E scientists were also working with superconductors and magnetism. Now,
Speaker 1: a conductor is a material that allows electrons to pass
Speaker 1: through it. You know, it conducts electricity. A superconductor is
Speaker 1: a material that does this with no resistance to the
Speaker 1: flow of electricity. So, under normal conditions, conductors have a
Speaker 1: bit of resistance to electricity, and the amount of resistance
Speaker 1: is dependent upon several factors, like how what what the
Speaker 1: actual material is, You know, what is the conductive material. Also,
Speaker 1: it's thickness or gauge. So a thin copper wire, for example,
Speaker 1: has higher resistance than a thick copper cable. They're both
Speaker 1: made of the same thing, but the physical structure is
Speaker 1: different and that changes the resistance of the material. G
Speaker 1: S super conducting magnet was the first to break through
Speaker 1: the one hundred thousand gass limit. The gass is a
Speaker 1: unit of measurement for magnetic flux density. I'll give you
Speaker 1: the technical definition of a gass as laid out by
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia Britannica. So here we go. One goss quote
Speaker 1: corresponds to the magnetic flux density that will induce an
Speaker 1: electromotive force of one ab volt in each linear centimeter
Speaker 1: of a wire moving laterally at one cimeter per second
Speaker 1: at right angles to a magnetic flux end quote. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's a bit of a mouthful. Anyway, we rate
Speaker 1: magnets in goss. That's how we measure their strength. So
Speaker 1: g S super conducting magnet was incredibly powerful. It would
Speaker 1: also lay the foundation for practical applications of that type
Speaker 1: of a magnet, particularly in the creation of magnetic resonance
Speaker 1: imaging technologies, and GE would play a very important role
Speaker 1: in developing that technology, or the m r I as
Speaker 1: we would say, um very important part of g S business.
Speaker 1: One of the fun facts I discovered while researching these
Speaker 1: episodes is that the footprints that the Apollo eleven astronauts
Speaker 1: left on the Moon are there in thanks to GE. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the boots worn by the astronauts had silicone rubber in
Speaker 1: them that had been manufactured by g E. So that's
Speaker 1: a g E footprint up there in a way. But
Speaker 1: that was just one of the contributions g E made
Speaker 1: to the Apollo program. I don't want to discount or
Speaker 1: dismiss any of the other ones that the company made.
Speaker 1: They actually provided a lot of technology to the space program.
Speaker 1: General Electric was involved in designing or manufacturing several systems
Speaker 1: related to the space race, including the ship to satellite
Speaker 1: communication system that allowed the Apollo crew to send TV
Speaker 1: images from the capsule to satellites orbiting the Earth, which
Speaker 1: in turn beamed those images down to terrestrial stations. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, another ge researcher, dr Ivar Giev, would
Speaker 1: get a Nobel prize. He had back in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: discovered the truly odd behavior of super conductive tunneling. So
Speaker 1: what the heck is tunneling? What it all has to
Speaker 1: do with the weird weird world of quantum mechanics and
Speaker 1: quantum physics. So when I was in school, we learned
Speaker 1: that electrons orbit the nucleus of atoms in a certain
Speaker 1: energy state, and electrons would quote unquote want to occupy
Speaker 1: the lowest energy state available. Once that energy state was
Speaker 1: full of electrons, then the next electrons would fill up
Speaker 1: the next available state further out from the nucleus, and
Speaker 1: so on and so on, until you had all the
Speaker 1: electrons that that particular atom would have, whether it was
Speaker 1: a base version of the atom or an eon or whatever.
Speaker 1: This was a pretty big simplification of what is actually
Speaker 1: going on, and in my books, I remember seeing the
Speaker 1: old illustrations. We had newer ones too, but I remember
Speaker 1: those old illustrations made it look like an electron was
Speaker 1: sort of like a planet orbiting around a sun like nucleus. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, according to those illustrations, it would appear
Speaker 1: that an electron has a specific position around the nucleus
Speaker 1: that you could measure and detect and predict. But as
Speaker 1: scientists would later learn, we could really only determined partial
Speaker 1: information about a sub atomic particles velocity and location. The
Speaker 1: more we knew about one of those two things, the
Speaker 1: less we would know about the other. So the more
Speaker 1: you know about a particle's velocity, the less you know
Speaker 1: about its position. The more you know about its position,
Speaker 1: the less you know about velocity. So really we don't
Speaker 1: know whether an electron quote unquote is in a specific place,
Speaker 1: but we we know where it can be, the various
Speaker 1: positions where the electron could possibly be found, so you
Speaker 1: can think of it as kind of a zone of
Speaker 1: probability or a field of probability. There's a chance the
Speaker 1: electron will be at any of those points within that field.
Speaker 1: It has to be within that field unless you've poured
Speaker 1: more energy into the atom and thus pushed the electron out.
Speaker 1: But it has to be somewhere in that field. You
Speaker 1: just don't know where it is. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: this amorphous fog that the electron could inhabit. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have a situation in which this field, this imaginary field,
Speaker 1: because we don't actually have a fog here, but if
Speaker 1: this field spans a barrier that normally you would have
Speaker 1: to use energy to get across, it means that the
Speaker 1: there's actually a possibility that the electron could appear on
Speaker 1: the other side of that barrier. So imagine you have
Speaker 1: a hallway and there's a door closed at the end
Speaker 1: of the hallway, and you have this electron field, and
Speaker 1: the electron field actually overlaps the door to the point
Speaker 1: where part of the field extends to the other side
Speaker 1: of the closed door. Now, you would expect the electron
Speaker 1: to be in the hallway. You didn't open the door.
Speaker 1: You saw the electron go into the hallway. You figure
Speaker 1: that's where it's got to be. But because that field
Speaker 1: overlaps the door, there is the possibility that the electron
Speaker 1: could be on the other side. And because there's a possibility,
Speaker 1: it means that sometimes there will be an electron on
Speaker 1: the other side of that door, and it's as if
Speaker 1: the electron has tunneled through or climbed over the door.
Speaker 1: But at no time did it ever have to expend
Speaker 1: energy to do that. It just appeared on the other side.
Speaker 1: This is tunneling, and it doesn't make a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sense to us because that's not how we observe
Speaker 1: things in our normal world. You don't go down the
Speaker 1: hallway and suddenly little Jimmy is just on the other
Speaker 1: side of the door because there was a chance little
Speaker 1: Jimmy was gonna be there. That doesn't happen in our
Speaker 1: real world, but in quantum physics it's tots a thing.
Speaker 1: It's also one of the reasons why developing microchips with
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller components becomes a really huge challenge because
Speaker 1: electron tunneling is a problem. If you're determined to channel
Speaker 1: electrons down specific pathways, as is the case with a circuit,
Speaker 1: then you run into an issue. If an electron can
Speaker 1: encounter a gate, the gate is closed, but because of
Speaker 1: electron tunneling, there's the possibility of the electron appearing on
Speaker 1: the other side of the gate. It means that you
Speaker 1: can create errors this way. Anyway, let's get back to
Speaker 1: g E S timeline. In ninet g ES Medical Systems
Speaker 1: Division developed an improved method for taking X ray cross
Speaker 1: section pictures which reduced the scanning time down to less
Speaker 1: than five seconds, which was an enormous improvement, a huge
Speaker 1: leap forward. Ad meant that patients wouldn't have to sit
Speaker 1: still for as long to get a cross section X
Speaker 1: ray done. Now, I'm reminded of a time when I
Speaker 1: had to get an X ray done and I was
Speaker 1: having a kidney stone and that was painful. It was
Speaker 1: so painful that just trying to stay still was a
Speaker 1: huge challenge for me. And it was technology like this,
Speaker 1: this breakthrough I was just talking about that made those
Speaker 1: sort of X ray scans much faster, much more efficient
Speaker 1: and reduced blurring, so that if the patient were moving
Speaker 1: because the scanning took so so little time, there was
Speaker 1: a better chance that you're going to get a nice
Speaker 1: clear picture. Otherwise, obviously, if the patient moves while the
Speaker 1: picture is being taken, you're gonna get blur. So I'm
Speaker 1: very thankful that GE was able to make X rays
Speaker 1: much more efficient and take less time. GE celebrated one
Speaker 1: years of innovation in nineteen seventy eight, which might be
Speaker 1: a little confusing at first because General Electric as a
Speaker 1: company was founded in eighteen nine two, not eighteen seventy eight. However,
Speaker 1: g also traces its historical roots back to an earlier company.
Speaker 1: If you listen to the first episode, you know about
Speaker 1: that Edison Electric Light company, that one began in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. According to a timeline on the GE website,
Speaker 1: specifically a timeline that's on gees website in India, the
Speaker 1: company states that nineteen became the first company to have
Speaker 1: received fifty thousand patents. Wow. While the company continued to
Speaker 1: diversify and work in various industries, a big change was
Speaker 1: around the corner, and that change happened in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: when Jack Welch, that chemical engineer I mentioned earlier, would
Speaker 1: become the company's youngest chairman and CEO. He replaced the
Speaker 1: outgoing CEO, which was a guy named Reginald H. Jones.
Speaker 1: Welch's ten year is an incredibly important one in the
Speaker 1: history of GE, so I figured it'd be good to
Speaker 1: get a little background on the man first. He was
Speaker 1: born in Peabody, Massachusetts, in nineteen thirty five. His father
Speaker 1: was a railroad conductor. Jack Welch would grow up in Salem, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and as a kid he loved playing sports. He really
Speaker 1: loved winning, and he despised losing. That would be a
Speaker 1: fundamental part of his character that would carry over to
Speaker 1: his work at GE. He received a bachelor's degree in
Speaker 1: chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and he
Speaker 1: received his masters and his pH d at the University
Speaker 1: of Illinois Champagne. Upon graduating and got a job at
Speaker 1: GE and he worked in their plastics division, and he
Speaker 1: had nearly quit his job after just a short while.
Speaker 1: He felt that gees organization was too cumbersome that was
Speaker 1: filled with middle management positions, it was bloated, and he
Speaker 1: felt his own work wasn't being valued properly, but an
Speaker 1: executive named Ruben Gutoff convinced Welch to stay with the company.
Speaker 1: So he did, and he would end up lee eating
Speaker 1: the plastic division after working there for a while, then
Speaker 1: he moved on to other executive roles. He oversaw the
Speaker 1: Chemical and Metallurgical division, then he headed up GE strategic planning.
Speaker 1: Then he became a sector executive for the consumer products division.
Speaker 1: And despite all of that, he wasn't first and foremost
Speaker 1: in the minds of the board of directors who are
Speaker 1: looking to fill that position of CEO. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll talk a little bit more about how he got
Speaker 1: his position and what he did with it, but first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Welch was just one of
Speaker 1: seven people under consideration for the role of g E
Speaker 1: CEO in nine He didn't even have a formalized plan
Speaker 1: for where he wanted the company to go, but he
Speaker 1: did have the determination to lead GE to being the
Speaker 1: number one company in every industry in which g E
Speaker 1: had a presence. This was enough to commence the board
Speaker 1: to name him CEO, and his first moves were really
Speaker 1: to streamline g E. While he had risen through the
Speaker 1: ranks in his decades at General Electric, he still felt
Speaker 1: that the company was bloated. That opinion had not changed,
Speaker 1: even though he had gone from being an engineer to
Speaker 1: an executive. At the time he assumed the position of CEO,
Speaker 1: g E was a mega giant, consisting of three hundred
Speaker 1: different businesses, and Welch saw that as a problem, because
Speaker 1: how could you focus and be the absolute best when
Speaker 1: your presence is spread so thin across so many businesses.
Speaker 1: And so Welch began to consolidate departments. He began to
Speaker 1: sell off divisions. He was trimming the fat. Part of
Speaker 1: that meant laying off employees, and Welch did that too.
Speaker 1: He did that a lot. By the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: just a few years after he had become CEO, GE
Speaker 1: had laid off around one hundred twenty thousand employees. This
Speaker 1: is hard for me to even imagine. The town I
Speaker 1: grew up in has a population of around forty thousand
Speaker 1: people today. G E laid off three times as many
Speaker 1: people as were in my hometown. That's tough for me
Speaker 1: to even imagine. The layoffs earned Welch a nickname neutron
Speaker 1: Jack because he was like a neutron bomb going off
Speaker 1: in the company, he would eliminate employees while leaving the
Speaker 1: corporate assets intact. A neutron bomb is thought of as
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's a sort of bomb that can
Speaker 1: kill living stuff and leave physical infrastructure untouched. Welch hated
Speaker 1: this nickname. It was a pretty cutthroat and brutal strategy,
Speaker 1: but Welch was pretty much demanding that approach. He wanted
Speaker 1: to get out of any business where GE did not
Speaker 1: occupy the number one or number two spot in the industry.
Speaker 1: If G were further behind them that he would rather
Speaker 1: ditch that part of the business than to continue to
Speaker 1: just sort of muddle along. It made little sense, he said,
Speaker 1: to be in businesses where other companies could go to
Speaker 1: market selling stuff cheaper than what it cost GE to
Speaker 1: manufacture those same things in the first place. So he
Speaker 1: gave an example of this. He's talked about television sets
Speaker 1: and Schenecta in New York. They were still making television
Speaker 1: sets when Jack Welch took over GE, but Welch said
Speaker 1: that Japanese companies were selling TV sets for less money
Speaker 1: to the final customer than it would cost GE to
Speaker 1: manufacture a set. So Japanese television set might sell for
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars and it might cost a hundred ten
Speaker 1: dollars for g E to even make a TV set.
Speaker 1: There was no way to compete in that space and
Speaker 1: at all make a profit, so it made no sense
Speaker 1: to keep the business. He preferred focusing the company's efforts
Speaker 1: on industries where they could outperform their competitors, rather than
Speaker 1: remain in a business just to have a foot in
Speaker 1: the door. Through a limiting divisions, selling off businesses, and
Speaker 1: through laying off thousands of employees, the company ended up
Speaker 1: saving a lot of money, to the tune of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars, and Welch wasn't just going to sit on
Speaker 1: those savings. He looked to reinvest in the company, and
Speaker 1: as part of that, he was looking for a possible acquisition,
Speaker 1: and he decided upon an old, familiar name. That name
Speaker 1: was r c A. Now, if you listen to the
Speaker 1: earlier GE episodes, or if you listen to my r
Speaker 1: c A episodes, you'll remember that General Electric was one
Speaker 1: of the founding companies that created our CIA in the
Speaker 1: first place. GE was also the majority shareholder until it
Speaker 1: was compelled to sell off those shares of our CIA,
Speaker 1: along with the other founders. This was because the United
Speaker 1: States government at the time had antitrust concerns about the
Speaker 1: radio industry. Well. The merger of g E and r
Speaker 1: c A was a six point three billion dollar deal,
Speaker 1: which was the largest in history at that point, and
Speaker 1: Welch took the same approach to our c A as
Speaker 1: he had to GE. Namely, he began hacking away at
Speaker 1: businesses he viewed as being distractions. So within three years
Speaker 1: of this deal, Welch had reduced the number of our
Speaker 1: CIA employees to half of what they once were. He
Speaker 1: oversaw r c A selling off almost all of its businesses.
Speaker 1: Really only two remained. One was the defense business that
Speaker 1: our ci A would do for the U. S Military
Speaker 1: and also for NASA. The other was the NBC television network,
Speaker 1: So this was the time when GE would own NBC.
Speaker 1: This was a subject that become a frequent plot point
Speaker 1: on the TV series thirty Rock. It's also when our
Speaker 1: c A effectively just became a name. It was no
Speaker 1: longer the company at once was, so if you listen
Speaker 1: to the r c A episodes, this is pretty much
Speaker 1: at the point where the r c A story ended
Speaker 1: working for Welch was really tough. If you were really
Speaker 1: good at your job and your job was in a
Speaker 1: division that Welch viewed as being central to GS mission,
Speaker 1: you had decent job security. Welch had employees go through
Speaker 1: regular performance reviews, and the emloyees who were in the
Speaker 1: top twenty would get bonuses. Those who were in the
Speaker 1: bottom ten percent were likely to get fired, and holy
Speaker 1: cats did. His strategy pushed GE to new heights. The
Speaker 1: company became known as the House that Jack built. The
Speaker 1: stock price for g E rose four thousand per cent. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the company was still churning out innovations such as groundbreaking
Speaker 1: work and fiber optics and magnetic residance imaging systems. The
Speaker 1: company also launched the Consumer News and Business Channel or
Speaker 1: c NBC in nine so it wasn't just a powerful
Speaker 1: company in industry, it was now also becoming a powerful
Speaker 1: media company. One other area Welch pushed g E into
Speaker 1: was financial services. With GE Capital, Welch led acquisition efforts
Speaker 1: to buy foreign banks, and GE also would become a
Speaker 1: major insurance provider. These services were at the time remarkably profitable.
Speaker 1: In fact, that an understatement when Welch took over GE,
Speaker 1: the company's value was fourteen billion dollars. By the time
Speaker 1: Welch would retire in two thousand one, the company's value
Speaker 1: was an excess of four hundred ten billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: a large part of that was due to the profitability
Speaker 1: of the financial services during that time. Also, we have
Speaker 1: to say that when this happened, it was a brilliant
Speaker 1: move from a business perspective. It pushed GE to new heights,
Speaker 1: and it made Welch a very wealthy man. It would
Speaker 1: also end up being the major pain point for GE
Speaker 1: several years later that I'm going to get to that
Speaker 1: in our next episode as it begins to play into
Speaker 1: the more recent allegations about g E and its accounting practices.
Speaker 1: But before we get to those dark tidings, let's finish
Speaker 1: up with some of the techie things that the company
Speaker 1: was doing under Welch's command. In GE, through its r
Speaker 1: c A Space division, delivered the Mars Observer to NASA.
Speaker 1: It had been seventeen years since NASA had sent a
Speaker 1: space craft to study Mars, so the intent was to
Speaker 1: launch the Mars Observer and insert it into an orbit
Speaker 1: around the Red planet. The Mars Observer had instruments meant
Speaker 1: to study the climate, geophysics, and the geology of Mars.
Speaker 1: The launch went off beautifully. On September n the orbiter
Speaker 1: began its long journey to Mars that would take nearly
Speaker 1: a full year, and on August twenty one nine, just
Speaker 1: a couple of days before the orbiter was meant to
Speaker 1: officially enter Mars's orbit, all communication was lost between the
Speaker 1: spacecraft and Earth. NASA was unable to re establish contact,
Speaker 1: so the mission was ultimately a failure, though NASA was
Speaker 1: at least able to learn some things through the process
Speaker 1: of sending the orbiter to Mars in the first place,
Speaker 1: but none of the primary mission objectives were achieved. In nineteen,
Speaker 1: in another move to dominate media, NBC and Microsoft partner
Speaker 1: together to launch the twenty four hour news channel ms NBC.
Speaker 1: In g E began to adhere to a quality control
Speaker 1: strategy called six Sigma, which calls for fewer than three
Speaker 1: defects per million opportunities now. To achieve that goal, g
Speaker 1: E would spend millions of dollars on training and new
Speaker 1: production processes, so it was a very expensive and time
Speaker 1: consuming effort, but Welch's view was that it would ultimately
Speaker 1: benefit the company and result in massive savings. Fewer defects
Speaker 1: would mean less waste. The first product from GE to
Speaker 1: go through this process was a medical scanner called the
Speaker 1: light Speed q X slash i CT system. In GE
Speaker 1: secured a contract with Boeing to build massive, powerful jet
Speaker 1: engines for Boeing seven seventy seven line of jets. The
Speaker 1: company produced the g E nine D family. Now this
Speaker 1: is not the only type of engine used on a
Speaker 1: seven seventy seven. There's a whole bunch of different variations
Speaker 1: of the seven seventy seven, and some of them use
Speaker 1: engines from other companies, So it all depends upon the
Speaker 1: version of the seven seventy seven you're looking at, but
Speaker 1: it is the largest and most powerful jet engine produced
Speaker 1: to date. In g E opened a new research lab.
Speaker 1: This one is called GE Global Research. It's located in Bangalore, India,
Speaker 1: and this marked an effort for g E to not
Speaker 1: just expand its overseas markets, which it ha been doing
Speaker 1: for the previous decades, but also to attract new talent
Speaker 1: in the field of technology, talent that wasn't just located
Speaker 1: in Europe or the United States. In two thousand, the
Speaker 1: company unveiled the tm DRED, which is a power plant
Speaker 1: on wheels. It's a gas turbine generator that can supply
Speaker 1: twenty two point eight megawatts of electricity. Takes a couple
Speaker 1: of days to set up once it's on location, and
Speaker 1: it's used for lots of different purposes, including as a
Speaker 1: way to supply electricity to areas that have been affected
Speaker 1: by natural disasters. Gas turbines, by the way, work in
Speaker 1: a very similar way to jet engines. You've got a
Speaker 1: compressor that draws air into the engine. The air gets compressed,
Speaker 1: and that's what a compressor does, and then it enters
Speaker 1: into the combustion chamber where it combines with fuel from
Speaker 1: fuel injectors. This mixture gets ignited and then it burns
Speaker 1: at a very high temperature. It generates high temperature, high
Speaker 1: pressure gas. The gas moves out of the combustion chamber
Speaker 1: into a turbine section. That's where the gas can expand
Speaker 1: and escape, and as it does so, the force of
Speaker 1: that escaping expanding gas turns a turbine. The turbine does
Speaker 1: two things. One, it drives the compressor, so it pulls
Speaker 1: in more air and thus keeps the process going as
Speaker 1: long as you have fuel to burn, and it also
Speaker 1: spends a generator to create electricity. Jack Welch planned to
Speaker 1: retire from GE and two thousand but one thing kept
Speaker 1: him around a little bit longer. That thing was a
Speaker 1: prize Welch really wanted for GE. There's a company called
Speaker 1: Honeywell International. Now. Honeywell makes advanced electronics for the aviation industry,
Speaker 1: among other things, and Welch led a forty billion dollar
Speaker 1: plus acquisition effort to get this company. He that Honeywell
Speaker 1: had another suitor, that of United Technologies Corporation, and he
Speaker 1: added a promise to Honeywell that he would stay on
Speaker 1: with GE until this acquisition was complete. He would delay
Speaker 1: his retirement until two thousand one. So they decided they
Speaker 1: would pursue this acquisition deal and things were going pretty well.
Speaker 1: The United States seemed fully on board, but then you
Speaker 1: get to the summer of two thousand one, and that's
Speaker 1: when European regulators expressed concern that this merger would stifle
Speaker 1: competition in the industry. Welch reportedly reached out to US
Speaker 1: government officials to see if anything could be done to
Speaker 1: smooth things out and get the deal approved. This had
Speaker 1: the effect of royally taking off those regulators, and ultimately
Speaker 1: the European Union denied authorization for this merger and the
Speaker 1: deal fell apart. Welch, who hated losing, lost this one.
Speaker 1: The CEO of Honeywell, Michael Bunt Sire, was shown the
Speaker 1: door not long after the deal was scrapped, and Welch
Speaker 1: would continue on towards his retire Ermont Jack Welch stepped
Speaker 1: down as CEO of g E on September seven, two
Speaker 1: thousand one. His replacement would be Jeffrey R. Emilt, and
Speaker 1: just four days after Emilt would take the helm of
Speaker 1: ge the terrorist attacks on the United States on September
Speaker 1: eleven would change the company's course. We'll talk about how
Speaker 1: that happened in our next episode. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you have a suggestion for a future episode of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a company, a technology, just a concept in tech,
Speaker 1: anything like that, let me know. You can send me
Speaker 1: an email the addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com or pop on over to tech Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where're gonna find the archive of all
Speaker 1: of our past episodes, all one thousand, one sixty plus
Speaker 1: of them, and you'll also find links to where we
Speaker 1: are on social media, as well as a link to
Speaker 1: our online store, where every purchase you make goes to
Speaker 1: help the show. We greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk
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