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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: John Than Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio and a love all things tech and uh I

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Speaker 1: am on vacation, y'all. If you hadn't heard that already,

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Speaker 1: then you need to listen to the last two episodes

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Speaker 1: because we are going through a series of classic tech

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Speaker 1: Stuff episodes. Classic Pig came out in two thousand nineteen.

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Speaker 1: They're all classics in my mind. Anyway, We're going through

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Speaker 1: this series about General Electric a k a. G. And

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Speaker 1: the reason we're doing that is that recently the company

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Speaker 1: announced that it plans to split into three separate companies

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Speaker 1: over the next few years, one focusing on energy, one

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Speaker 1: focusing on healthcare, and one focusing on aviation, with the

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Speaker 1: aviation company retaining the name GE. So with that in mind,

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Speaker 1: we're going to listen to part three of that series,

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Speaker 1: G E and the House that Jack Built. Now. That

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Speaker 1: episode originally published on September nine, two thousand nineteen. One

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Speaker 1: more thing tomorrow, we should have a brand new Smart

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Speaker 1: Talks with IBM episode, and so that will publish tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: But then on Friday, we will conclude the g E series.

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Speaker 1: So sit back, relax, and enjoy g E and the

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Speaker 1: House that Jack built. We are continuing our journey through

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Speaker 1: the history of General Electric or GE, a company that

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Speaker 1: has encountered some pretty significant challenges over the last decade

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Speaker 1: or so. Now. In our first two episodes, I went

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Speaker 1: through the founding of g E and then made my

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Speaker 1: way all the way up through World War Two, and

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Speaker 1: I talked about how some of the top level executives

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Speaker 1: of the company were called upon by the US government

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Speaker 1: to serve in wartime government position to help the US

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Speaker 1: meet the needs of supplying the military with the equipment

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Speaker 1: necessary to fight the war. I also talked about how

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Speaker 1: GE continued to grow as a company, building on new

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Speaker 1: departments and divisions and diversifying the company's businesses. And I

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Speaker 1: ended the last episode by talking about a court case

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Speaker 1: that determined GE was being anti competitive by leveraging patents

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Speaker 1: in order to act as an effective monopoly when it

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Speaker 1: came to manufacturing lightbulbs. Now we're almost up to nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty and it's time to get out of this world.

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Speaker 1: The one thing I want to mention before we get

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Speaker 1: into the nineteen fifties. Is that in nineteen forty six

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Speaker 1: a scientist at GE named Vincent Schaefer developed the process

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Speaker 1: of cloud seating. And the idea is pretty elegant but

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Speaker 1: has long been a subject of scientific dispute. So here's

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Speaker 1: the process. It involves distributing tiny particles into clouds in

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Speaker 1: an effort to make it rain. And the thought is

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Speaker 1: that these particles will act as nucleic sites for rain

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Speaker 1: drops to form. When the raindrops get large enough, they

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Speaker 1: have enough weight to fall to Earth. And so that

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Speaker 1: is the general thought behind cloud seating. It's been practiced

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Speaker 1: ever since, but there have been many questions over whether

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Speaker 1: or not cloud seating actually works. Sometimes it would rain,

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Speaker 1: sometimes it wouldn't, and if it did rain, is there

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Speaker 1: any way to be sure that it was the cloud

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Speaker 1: seating that actually made the difference. I mean, you had

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Speaker 1: to have a cloud there in the first place. You

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Speaker 1: couldn't just manufacture a cloud. Experiments and labs suggested that

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Speaker 1: it should work, but the natural world is very different

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Speaker 1: from the controlled conditions of a lab environment. It didn't

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Speaker 1: help that many of our measuring instruments lacked the precision

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Speaker 1: to detect very small raindrops. So you couldn't really monitor

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Speaker 1: to see if it was actually doing what it was

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Speaker 1: supposed to do. An experiment in two thousand eighteen suggests

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Speaker 1: that cloud seating does in fact work, at least to

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Speaker 1: some extent. But there's another question that's still open, which

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Speaker 1: is does cloud seeding make economic sense? Does the amount

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Speaker 1: of water produced by rainfall justify the cost of flying

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Speaker 1: aircraft up and distributing the particles in the first place.

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Speaker 1: Because it may very well work, but it might not

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Speaker 1: work well enough to make sense from a financial perspective.

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Speaker 1: I just find it fascinating that we've essentially been doing

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Speaker 1: this for seventy years and we still don't know if

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Speaker 1: we should be doing it. Now. I can certainly see

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Speaker 1: why cloud seating companies feel we should be doing it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's their business. But the jury is still

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Speaker 1: technically out over whether or not it makes sense, and

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Speaker 1: there's still a little bit debate on whether or not

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Speaker 1: it really truly works, or if it works in enough

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Speaker 1: conditions for it to be reasonable. Now, in ve Ge

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Speaker 1: made the first two door refrigerator freezer combo, and I

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Speaker 1: only mentioned it here because I think it's cool. That's

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Speaker 1: a pun. Now we're up to the nineteen fifties. So

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty one, GE built a new jet engine

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Speaker 1: called the J seven nine. And here's an interesting historical note.

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Speaker 1: When engineers tested the J seven nine, which had variable statters,

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Speaker 1: the efficiency ratings were so high that the engineers thought

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Speaker 1: their instruments were malfunctioning. There's no way we're getting this

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Speaker 1: level of energy efficiency out of this thing. But then

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Speaker 1: that raises a question for a lot of people, what

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Speaker 1: is a statter? What does that actually mean? Well, the

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Speaker 1: name gives you a hint. Statter stationary, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: So in jet engines, you have fan blades that rotate.

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Speaker 1: Those are rotors, and you had fan blades that hold

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Speaker 1: in place. Those are called statters. And the purpose of

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Speaker 1: this combination is to both draw air into the engine

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Speaker 1: and to compress that air before it enters into the

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Speaker 1: combustion chamber. The adjustable status meant that the engine could

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Speaker 1: be finely tuned to produce higher compressor pressures and to

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Speaker 1: produce more usable energy as opposed to waste heat when

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Speaker 1: you're actually burning fuel. In nineteen four, g E Research

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Speaker 1: Laboratory scientists named Tracy Hall announced that his team had

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Speaker 1: discovered a way to create synthetic diamonds in the lab.

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Speaker 1: Hall's team used a process involving high pressure high temperature

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Speaker 1: or hp HT. They were successful in producing synthetic diamonds

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Speaker 1: on December sixteenth, nineteen fifty four. Now, other teams were

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Speaker 1: using different methods to create diamonds of in other companies

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Speaker 1: as well, but it was Hall's efforts that would receive

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Speaker 1: the credit for designing the first reliable, reproducible methodology to

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Speaker 1: create commercially viable synthetic diamonds. So there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of qualifiers there because there were people who were working

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Speaker 1: on different methodologies and they were also producing diamonds, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't considered to be as reliable nor as viable

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Speaker 1: for a commercial use. And these were not diamonds meant

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Speaker 1: to adore engagement rings or other jewelry. For one, they

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Speaker 1: were brownish in color, so they weren't terribly attractive. They

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Speaker 1: also were very very tiny. The largest diamond they produced

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Speaker 1: in that early batch measured point one five millimeters across,

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Speaker 1: so these were not large stones. More importantly, this purpose

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Speaker 1: would be put to commercial uses. In fact, it wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be until the nineteen seventies that scientists would actually be

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Speaker 1: able to create diamonds of sufficient quality and clarity that

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Speaker 1: they could be used in the gem industry. And even then,

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Speaker 1: the process was so labor intensive and so expensive it

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Speaker 1: was not economically feasible to create synthetic diamonds for decorative purposes.

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Speaker 1: The cost of the synthetic diamond would be so high

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Speaker 1: that would actually be cheaper for you to go out

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Speaker 1: and buy a ring with a natural diamond on it. Also,

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Speaker 1: the whole topic of diamonds is one that I find

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Speaker 1: particularly upsetting, but that's a that's a topic for a

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Speaker 1: totally different podcast. So how did they make synthetic diamonds? Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure most of you know, diamonds are a form

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Speaker 1: of carbon. It's a it's a crystalline form of carbon.

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Speaker 1: You've gotta crystalline structure where you have a carbon atom

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Speaker 1: that's surrounded by four other carbon atoms and they're all

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Speaker 1: connected to each other through strong covalent bonds. And diamonds

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Speaker 1: are incredibly hard. They are the hardest natural substance we

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Speaker 1: found so far. They also have a lot of different

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Speaker 1: industrial uses. They can operate at high temperatures where they

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Speaker 1: can hold firm at high temperatures. They don't really operate

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Speaker 1: at all. They're just minerals, but they hold together well

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Speaker 1: at high temperatures, so you put it on something like

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Speaker 1: a high speed cutting tool, and the hardness combined with

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Speaker 1: the fact that it's not going to break down at

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Speaker 1: high temperatures, means you can run that very high RPMs

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Speaker 1: and start cutting through stuff pretty well. In nature, diamonds

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Speaker 1: form as carbon is compressed at very high temperatures over

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Speaker 1: a very long time, and if it weren't for stuff

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Speaker 1: like volcanoes, we probably never would have found the things

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Speaker 1: because they tend to form in the Earth's mantle, which

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Speaker 1: is not easy to get to. They they the zone

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Speaker 1: where they form is about a hundred miles beneath the

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Speaker 1: surface of the Earth. That's far deeper than we've ever drilled.

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Speaker 1: Hall's lab used a belt press, and this press could

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Speaker 1: exert more than ten giga pascals of pressure. A pascal

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Speaker 1: is a unit of measurement for pressure, and it equates

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Speaker 1: to a Newton per square meter. Standard atmospheric pressure is

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Speaker 1: about one one point three to five kilo pascals, so

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Speaker 1: a giga pascal is one billion pascals. Ten giga pascals

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Speaker 1: would be ten billion pascals, So that's a lot of pressure.

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Speaker 1: G E would actually put it in another way for

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Speaker 1: those of us who don't use you know, scientific notation

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Speaker 1: for everything. They said, the press could exert one point

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Speaker 1: five if million pounds per square inch of pressure, So

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Speaker 1: in other words, it's just a whole lot of pressure.

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Speaker 1: And plus it would operate at a very high temperature.

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Speaker 1: It would be heated to a temperature of more than

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Speaker 1: three thousand, six fifty degrees fahrenheit or two thousand ten

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Speaker 1: degrees celsius. This press pushed against a mixture of graphite,

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Speaker 1: which is another form of carbon, and the graphite would

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Speaker 1: be dissolved in a catalyst metal and catalyst metals could

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Speaker 1: include stuff like nickel or iron. A catalyst in a

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Speaker 1: chemical reaction is something that facilitates and speeds up the

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Speaker 1: chemical reaction. So in this case, and meant that we

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Speaker 1: didn't have to wait millions of years for synthetic diamonds

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Speaker 1: to form. Instead took about twenty minutes. The largest of

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Speaker 1: those diamonds, like I said, was point one five millimeters across,

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Speaker 1: so pretty darn tiny. The following year, g E introduced

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Speaker 1: hermetically sealed relays. These are electronic components that could be

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Speaker 1: used in lots of different applications that otherwise might be

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Speaker 1: sensitive to their environments, particularly in stuff like high altitude

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Speaker 1: airplanes and aerospace applications, and variations of these components would

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Speaker 1: be used throughout the next few decades in those particular applications.

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Speaker 1: There's just one early example of how GE would become

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Speaker 1: an important part of the space race, which was just

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Speaker 1: heating up in the nineteen fifties between the United States

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Speaker 1: and the then Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the company continued to

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Speaker 1: expand its consumer product line. It had introduced a toaster

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Speaker 1: decades earlier, but in nineteen fifty six it introduced the

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Speaker 1: toaster oven. Specifically, it was one called the tree toast

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Speaker 1: our oven, and it's adorable. You should look up a

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Speaker 1: picture of it. That same year, GE built a commercial

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Speaker 1: jet engine based off the J seventy nine design, which

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Speaker 1: was intended for military aircraft that wasn't meant to be

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Speaker 1: for commercial aircraft. So this new engine, which had the

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Speaker 1: designation c J eight oh five, would mark General Electrics

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Speaker 1: entry into the commercial jet engine business. So now they

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Speaker 1: were building jet engines not just for the U. S Military,

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Speaker 1: but also for companies like Boeing and other companies were

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Speaker 1: creating aircraft would be a really big year for GE.

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Speaker 1: The company secured a contract with the United States Air

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Speaker 1: Force to provide the engine for an experimental supersonic aircraft,

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Speaker 1: the x B seventy Valkyrie. Now the X in aircraft

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Speaker 1: names is a big tip off that that's an experimental prototype.

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Speaker 1: You'll often see X as part of the designation at

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Speaker 1: the beginning of various aircraft that usually means experimental. The engine,

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Speaker 1: called d J ninety three, was capable of producing enough

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Speaker 1: thrust to propel the experimental aircraft to three times the

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Speaker 1: speed of sound, and it would travel an altitude of

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Speaker 1: seventy thousand feet or about twenty one meters. Not the time,

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Speaker 1: the thinking was that the greatest threat to bombers were

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Speaker 1: intercept aircraft. So if you could fly high enough and

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Speaker 1: fast enough, you wouldn't have to worry about that. No

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Speaker 1: one would ever be able to get a bead on you.

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Speaker 1: They wouldn't be able to to track you and fire

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Speaker 1: on you at that speed and at that altitude, so

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Speaker 1: the Valkyrie would be safe against typical defenses. However, the

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Speaker 1: Soviet Union was developing service to air missile technology and

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Speaker 1: that started to bring into question whether or not the

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Speaker 1: Valkyrie would be equally as effective against that sort of

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Speaker 1: defense system. And one of the ways to get around

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Speaker 1: that would be to fly the Valkyrie at lower altitudes

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Speaker 1: where it could fly beneath radar. But if you did that,

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Speaker 1: you also had to fly slower. You couldn't fly at

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Speaker 1: the same mock three speed at lower altitudes. That meant

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Speaker 1: that the bomber would be flying lower and slower than

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Speaker 1: it was designed to do, and it would be no

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Speaker 1: more effective than other bombers that were already in use

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Speaker 1: at that time, and it was more expensive. So with

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Speaker 1: all of those considerations stacked again into the Valkyrie, the

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Speaker 1: ultimate decision was not to go into production and build

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Speaker 1: those out as a production model, so it just remained

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Speaker 1: an experimental prototype. But it is super cool to look at.

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Speaker 1: If you ever want to look at a picture of

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Speaker 1: a x B seventy Valkyrie, they're pretty neat looking. Something

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Speaker 1: else that happened in nineteen fifty seven was that General

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Speaker 1: Electric constructed a nuclear power plant in Alameda County, California,

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Speaker 1: and it was the first nuclear reactor to be connected

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Speaker 1: to a commercial electricity grid. In other words, General Electric

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Speaker 1: was able to produce electricity that would go to average

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Speaker 1: citizens over an Alameda County. And I've talked a little

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Speaker 1: bit about how nuclear power plants work, I'll just give

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Speaker 1: a very very high level rundown. So you have a

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Speaker 1: nuclear material that undergoes nuclear decay, and as part of

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Speaker 1: that process, it releases subatomic particles, typically neutrons, and those

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Speaker 1: neutrons collide with other atoms of that same nuclear material.

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Speaker 1: This is your fuel, and when they collide with those

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Speaker 1: other atoms, it initiates a chain reaction. Those atoms then

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Speaker 1: go undergo radioactive decay and they release neutrons and so

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Speaker 1: on and so forth. So if there's enough thistle material,

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Speaker 1: that is material that can split apart in the fuel,

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Speaker 1: this reaction can be sustained until the amount of fuel

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Speaker 1: dips below critical levels, in which case you start to

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Speaker 1: have fewer and fewer reactions and you've spent the nuclear fuel.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that all the nuclear radiation stuff is gone,

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Speaker 1: far from it, but it's no longer producing the reactions

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Speaker 1: that the level you need to sustain that reaction indefinitely.

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Speaker 1: This is a nuclear power plant. Now, the concentration of

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Speaker 1: nuclear material is really high where that reaction starts to

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Speaker 1: pick up speed over and over and over again, and

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Speaker 1: this happens in the blink of an eye. Then you

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Speaker 1: can set off a much more explosive chain reaction. In

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Speaker 1: that case you have a nuclear bomb rather than a

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Speaker 1: power plant, and that that concentration is key there. That's

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Speaker 1: why you'll hear stories about how how much UH uranium

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Speaker 1: you would need for a nuclear power plant versus one

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Speaker 1: for you know, refined uranium for a nuclear bomb. Now,

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Speaker 1: this reaction produces a lot of heat, and it's the

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Speaker 1: heat that's the key for these nuclear power plants. That heat,

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Speaker 1: usually through a paired system of pipes, transfers to a boiler,

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Speaker 1: and the water in the boiler boils into steam, and

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Speaker 1: that steam then turns turbines which generate electricity. So a

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Speaker 1: nuclear power plant is, if you think about it, really

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Speaker 1: just a way to boil water, really fast and really efficiently.

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Speaker 1: Cold power plants also boil water, but obviously they do

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Speaker 1: it through combustion rather than through a nuclear reaction. So

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Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me is that the the part

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Speaker 1: that generates the heat is different, but the end result

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Speaker 1: is very much the same in the sense that you're

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Speaker 1: boiling water to create steam to turn turbines to generate electricity. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'll not go down the nuclear power rabbit hole because

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Speaker 1: there's much more to talk about just with general electric

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Speaker 1: But if you want to learn more about nuclear power plants,

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Speaker 1: do a quick search over at tech stuff podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: That's where we have an archive of all of our

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Speaker 1: past episodes. You can also learn the difference between fission

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Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, which are what we use today, and fusion

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Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, which we hope we can make feasible in

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Speaker 1: the near future. We have done fusion reactions already, but

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Speaker 1: the question is can you make that sustainable? Can you

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Speaker 1: make it economically feasible. That's a question that we have

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Speaker 1: not yet answered, but if we are able to do it,

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Speaker 1: it could transform the world anyway. The GE facility, which

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Speaker 1: was called the Valacitos Nuclear Center, it still exists. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It was only an active power plant until nineteen sixty three.

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Speaker 1: At that point the federal government told g E to

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Speaker 1: shut it down, so the boiler reactor was shut down

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, but GE maintains the facility mainly

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Speaker 1: for the purposes of testing an analysis, particularly testing radiated

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Speaker 1: materials to see how long they remain at dangerous levels

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Speaker 1: of radiation. For example, So if you have instruments or suits,

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Speaker 1: things like that that would exist in a radiation radiation

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Speaker 1: UH filled area, you want to know how long is

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Speaker 1: that stuff going to be dangerous UM. That's just part

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Speaker 1: of what they do now. A major part of that facility.

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Speaker 1: UH One of the largest of the reactors on that

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Speaker 1: site got shut down in ninety seven. It was still

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Speaker 1: being used for research purposes, but not to generate electricity.

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Speaker 1: Why was it shut down, Well, it was discovered that

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Speaker 1: it had the unfortunate distinction of sitting nearly directly on

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Speaker 1: top of a fault line. There was a legitimate concern

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Speaker 1: over what might happen should an earthquake hit while the

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Speaker 1: reactor was an operation. There is still a smaller reactor

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Speaker 1: on the site that operates in the one kilowatt range,

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Speaker 1: but it's the only one as far as I can tell. Otherwise,

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Speaker 1: all the other reactors have been completely decommissioned to shut down.

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Speaker 1: We've got a lot more to say about general electric

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Speaker 1: but before I get into that, let's take a quick break.

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Speaker 1: The work out of GEES Research Lab was pretty incredible

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. You had the nuclear scientists building

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Speaker 1: that first licensed power plant to provide electricity to a grid.

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Speaker 1: You had synthetic diamonds, and you had Robert H. Windorf

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Speaker 1: who created a substance called borazon in the lab. Borizon

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Speaker 1: is is a man made substance. You don't find it

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Speaker 1: in nature, but it's almost as hard as diamond, and

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Speaker 1: it can be used in temperatures much higher than even

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Speaker 1: diamonds can be used in. Like, diamonds will break down

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Speaker 1: once you get over a certain temperature, but borizon can

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Speaker 1: hold together longer. So it would also become a very

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Speaker 1: useful component in industrial cutting tools, for example. Now around

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Speaker 1: the same time, a different group of engineers were building

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Speaker 1: something perhaps a bit less lofty in the grand scheme

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Speaker 1: of things, but that would be the humble electric can opener.

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Speaker 1: G introduced the first consumer electric can opener in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty eight, and pet ownership has never been the same since.

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Speaker 1: In nine g E introduced the halogen lamp. These work

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Speaker 1: in a way very similar to incandescent lamps. There's a

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Speaker 1: tungsten filament inside a very small bulb, and encasing the

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Speaker 1: filament is a quartz envelope. Inside the envelope is a

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Speaker 1: gas from the halogen group of gases, so this is

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Speaker 1: different from what the kind of gas you would find

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Speaker 1: in your typical incandescent bulb. The benefit of halogen gas

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Speaker 1: is that it can combine with tungsten vapor. So when

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Speaker 1: the tungsten filament heats up and it starts to give

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Speaker 1: off light, it's also giving off tungsten vapor. You know,

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Speaker 1: tungsten is essentially burning off of the filament. That vapor

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Speaker 1: combines with the halogen gas, and then it gets deposited

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Speaker 1: back onto the tungsten filament, at least some of it does,

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Speaker 1: so some of that vaporized tungsten gets returned. That actually

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Speaker 1: helps extend the useful life of the halogen lamp. Halogen

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Speaker 1: lamps can produce a lot more light per unit of

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Speaker 1: energy compared to an incandescent bulb. They also produce a

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Speaker 1: lot more heat, and as someone who has sadly a

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Speaker 1: few halogen lamp fixtures in his house, I can speak

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Speaker 1: from experiences. Those things get real hot. Guys like you

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Speaker 1: will burn your fingers. I know I have. Anyway. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty a device built by g E became the

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Speaker 1: first man made object to be recovered after going into

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Speaker 1: orbit around the Earth. It was codenamed by g E

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Speaker 1: the r v X to a reentry vehicle that was

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Speaker 1: part of the Discoverer thirteen satellite. The discovered thirteen satellite

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Speaker 1: kind of set the stage for space based connaissance and

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Speaker 1: spy missions. Now, granted, that was not the public facing

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Speaker 1: part of the mission. Obviously, letting everyone know, hey, this

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Speaker 1: is a spy satellite is not the best plan if

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Speaker 1: you want to use it for you know, spy stuff.

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Speaker 1: So there was a cover story, and the cover story

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Speaker 1: was essentially that it was a science experiment, but in

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Speaker 1: reality it was a classified mission that was overseen by

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Speaker 1: both the Air Force and the c I A. G

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Speaker 1: would go on to open up a space center in

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Speaker 1: Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in nineteen sixty one because they were

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Speaker 1: getting more and more involved in building components for the

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Speaker 1: space race. Also in nineteen sixty there was a guy

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Speaker 1: named Jack Welch who joined GE as a chemical engineer.

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Speaker 1: He'll be really important later, so remember that name, Jack Welch.

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Speaker 1: We'll get back to it. Nineteen sixty two, scientists from

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Speaker 1: GE would develop one of the first solid state lasers

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Speaker 1: using semiconductors. Interestingly, siists at IBM and over at M

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Speaker 1: I T were independently doing the exact same thing, and

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Speaker 1: all the parties pretty much cracked the problem right around

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Speaker 1: the same time. This set off a bit of a

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Speaker 1: patent rush, with GE beating IBM to the punch by

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Speaker 1: a little more than a week. I just find it

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Speaker 1: fascinating that the solid state laser was one of those

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Speaker 1: things that multiple parties invented at around the same time,

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Speaker 1: independently of each other. But to be fair, the stage

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Speaker 1: had already been set with early work in masers and lasers,

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Speaker 1: so these were not the first lasers. They were the

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Speaker 1: first solid state ones. Solid state lasers would then find

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Speaker 1: their way into numerous technologies and applications. Early on, scientists

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Speaker 1: theorized that they could be incredibly useful in communications, but

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Speaker 1: they would become so commonplace that we'd rely on them

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Speaker 1: to play our tunes for us. Because the laser and

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Speaker 1: stuff like CD players, DVD players, Blu ray players, those

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Speaker 1: are all solid state lasers. So what was truly cutting

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Speaker 1: edge technology in nineteen sixty two is also commonplace that

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Speaker 1: you can go out and buy one and use it

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Speaker 1: to frustrate your pets. You know, you can just go

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Speaker 1: get a little key chain with a solid state laser

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Speaker 1: on it um. But I'm pretty sure back in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two, no one thought that that was going to

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Speaker 1: be a future possibility. D E scientists were also working

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Speaker 1: with superconductors and magnetism. Now, a conductor is a material

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Speaker 1: that allows electrons to pass through it. You know, it

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Speaker 1: conducts electricity. A superconductor is a material that does this

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Speaker 1: with no resistance to the flow of electricity. So, under

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Speaker 1: normal conditions, conductors have a bit of resistance to electricity,

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Speaker 1: and the amount of resistance is dependent upon several factors,

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Speaker 1: like how what what the actual material is. You know,

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Speaker 1: what is the conductive material. Also, it's thickness or gauge.

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Speaker 1: So a thin copper wire, for example, has higher resistance

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Speaker 1: than a thick copper cable. They're both made of the

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Speaker 1: same thing, but the physical structure is different and that

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Speaker 1: changes the resistance of the material. Ges superconducting magnet was

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Speaker 1: the first to break through the one hundred thousand goths limit.

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Speaker 1: The GOSS is a unit of measurement for magnetic flux density.

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Speaker 1: I'll give you the technical definition of a GOSS as

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Speaker 1: laid out by the Encyclopedia Britannica. So here we go.

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Speaker 1: One GOSS quote corresponds to the magnetic flux density that

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Speaker 1: will induce an electromotive force of one ab volt in

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Speaker 1: each linear centimeter of a wire moving laterally at one

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Speaker 1: centimeter per second at right angles to a magnetic flux

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Speaker 1: end quote. Okay, so that's a bit of a mouthful. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: we rate magnets in GAUSS, that's how we measure their strength.

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Speaker 1: So g s super conducting magnet was incredibly powerful. It

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Speaker 1: would also lay the foundation for practical applications of that

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Speaker 1: type of a magnet, particularly in the creation of magnetic

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Speaker 1: resonance imaging technologies, and GE would play a very important

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Speaker 1: role in developing that technology, or the m r I

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Speaker 1: as we would say, um very important part of gees business.

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Speaker 1: One of the fun facts I discovered while researching these

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00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: episodes is that the footprints that the Apollo eleven astronauts

434
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:15,879
Speaker 1: left on the Moon are there in thanks to GE. Specifically,

435
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: the boots worn by the astronauts had silicone rubber in

436
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,439
Speaker 1: them that had been manufactured by GE. So that's a

437
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: g E footprint up there in a way. But that

438
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: was just one of the contributions g e made to

439
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: the Apollo program. I don't want to discount or dismiss

440
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: any of the other ones that the company made. They

441
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: actually provided a lot of technology to the space program.

442
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 1: General Electric was involved in designing or manufacturing several systems

443
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: related to the space race, including the ship to satellite

444
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: communication system that allowed the Apollo crew to send TV

445
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: images from the capsule to satellites orbiting the Earth, which

446
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:54,439
Speaker 1: in turn beamed those images down to terrestrial stations. In

447
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, another ge researcher, dr Ivar Giev, would

448
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:03,560
Speaker 1: get a Nobel prize. He had back in nineteen sixty

449
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: discovered the truly odd behavior of super conductive tunneling. So

450
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: what the heck is tunneling? What it all has to

451
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: do with the weird weird world of of quantum mechanics

452
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:17,919
Speaker 1: and quantum physics. So when I was in school, we

453
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:21,199
Speaker 1: learned that electrons orbit the nucleus of atoms in a

454
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,919
Speaker 1: certain energy state, and electrons would quote unquote want to

455
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: occupy the lowest energy state available. Once that energy state

456
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 1: was full of electrons, then the next electrons would fill

457
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:35,920
Speaker 1: up the next available state further out from the nucleus,

458
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:38,360
Speaker 1: and so on and so on until you had all

459
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,879
Speaker 1: the electrons that that particular atom would have, whether it

460
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 1: was a base version of the atom or an eye

461
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: on or whatever. This was a pretty big simplification of

462
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: what is actually going on. And in my books, I

463
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 1: remember seeing the old illustrations. We had newer ones too,

464
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,919
Speaker 1: but I remember those old illustrations made it look like

465
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: an electron was sort of like a planet orbiting around us,

466
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:04,200
Speaker 1: unlike nucleus. So, in other words, according to those illustrations,

467
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: it would appear that an electron has a specific position

468
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: around the nucleus that you could measure and detect and predict.

469
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: But as scientists would later learn, we could really only

470
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: determine partial information about a sub atomic particles velocity and location.

471
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: The more we knew about one of those two things,

472
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:24,439
Speaker 1: the less we would know about the other. So the

473
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 1: more you know about a particle's velocity, the less you

474
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: know about its position. The more you know about its position,

475
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: the less you know about velocity. So really we don't

476
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 1: know whether an electron quote unquote is in a specific place,

477
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: but we we know where it can be the various

478
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 1: positions where the electron could possibly be found, So you

479
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: can think of it as kind of a zone of

480
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: probability or a field of probability. There's a chance the

481
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: electron will be at any of those points within that field.

482
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: It has to be within that field unless you've poured

483
00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: more energy into the atom and thus pushed the electron out.

484
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 1: But it has to be somewhere in that field. You

485
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: just don't know where it is. So it's kind of

486
00:29:05,520 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: this amorphous fog that the electron could inhabit. Now, if

487
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: you have a situation in which this field, this imaginary field,

488
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: because we don't actually have a fog here, but if

489
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: this field spans a barrier that normally you would have

490
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: to use energy to get across, it means that the

491
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: there's actually a possibility that the electron could appear on

492
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: the other side of that barrier. So imagine you have

493
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: a hallway and there's a door closed at the end

494
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: of the hallway, and you have this electron field, and

495
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: the electron field actually overlaps the door to the point

496
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: where part of the field extends to the other side

497
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: of the closed door. Now, you would expect the electron

498
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 1: to be in the hallway. You you didn't open the door.

499
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:56,480
Speaker 1: You saw the electron go into the hallway. You figure

500
00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: that's where it's got to be. But because that field

501
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 1: overlap the door, there is the possibility that the electron

502
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: could be on the other side. And because there's a possibility,

503
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: it means that sometimes there will be an electron on

504
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: the other side of that door, and it's as if

505
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: the electron has tunneled through or climbed over the door.

506
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: But at no time did it ever have to expend

507
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: energy to do that. It just appeared on the other side.

508
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: This is tunneling, and it doesn't make a whole lot

509
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 1: of sense to us because that's not how we observe

510
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: things in our normal world. You don't go down the

511
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: hallway and suddenly a little Jimmy is just on the

512
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: other side of the door because there was a chance

513
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: little Jimmy was gonna be there. That doesn't happen in

514
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: our real world, but in quantum physics it's totes a thing.

515
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: It's also one of the reasons why developing microchips with

516
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller components becomes a really huge challenge because

517
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: electron tunneling is a problem if you're determined to channel

518
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: electrons down specific pathways, as is the case with a circuit,

519
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:58,760
Speaker 1: then you run into an issue. If an electron can

520
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,600
Speaker 1: encounter a gay, the gate is closed, but because of

521
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: electron tunneling, there's the possibility of the electron appearing on

522
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: the other side of the gate. It means that you

523
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 1: can create errors this way. Anyway, let's get back to

524
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 1: g E S timeline. In ninety eight, g ES Medical

525
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: Systems Division developed an improved method for taking X ray

526
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: cross section pictures which reduced the scanning time down to

527
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: less than five seconds, which was an enormous improvement, a

528
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 1: huge leap forward and meant that patients wouldn't have to

529
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 1: sit still for as long to get a cross section

530
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: X ray done. Now, I'm reminded of a time when

531
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 1: I had to get an X ray done and I

532
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: was having a kidney stone and that was painful. It

533
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: was so painful that just trying to stay still was

534
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: a huge challenge for me. And it was technology like this,

535
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: this breakthrough I was just talking about that made those

536
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: sort of X ray scans much faster, much more efficient,

537
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: and reduced blurring, so that if the patient we're moving

538
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:01,360
Speaker 1: because the scanning took so so little time, there was

539
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: a better chance that you're going to get a nice

540
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: clear picture. Otherwise, obviously, if the patient moves while the

541
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: picture is being taken, you're gonna get blur. So I'm

542
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: very thankful that GE was able to make X rays

543
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: much more efficient and take less time. GE celebrated one

544
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: years of innovation in nineteen seventy eight, which might be

545
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 1: a little confusing at first because General Electric as a

546
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: company was founded in eighteen two, not eighteen seventy eight. However,

547
00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: g also traces its historical roots back to an earlier company.

548
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: If you listen to the first episode, you know about

549
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 1: that Edison Electric Light company, that one began in eighteen

550
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 1: seventy eight. According to a timeline on the GE website,

551
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: specifically a timeline that's on gees website in India, the

552
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 1: company states that nine became the first company to have

553
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:55,240
Speaker 1: received fifty thousand patents. Wow. While the company continued to

554
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: diversify and work in various industries, a big change was

555
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: around the corner and that change happened in nineteen eighty

556
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 1: one when Jack Welch, that chemical engineer I mentioned earlier,

557
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: would become the company's youngest chairman and CEO. He replaced

558
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 1: the outgoing CEO, which was a guy named Reginald H. Jones.

559
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 1: Welch's tenure is an incredibly important one in the history

560
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: of GE, so I figured it'd be good to get

561
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: a little background on the man first. He was born

562
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: in Peabody, Massachusetts, in ninety five. His father was a

563
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: railroad conductor. Jack Welch would grow up in Salem, Massachusetts,

564
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: and as a kid he loved playing sports. He really

565
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: loved winning, and he despised losing. That would be a

566
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: fundamental part of his character that would carry over to

567
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: his work at GE. He received a bachelor's degree in

568
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and he

569
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: received his master's and his pH d at the University

570
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: of Illinois Champagne. Upon graduating and got a job at

571
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: GE and he worked in their plastics division, and he

572
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: had nearly quit his job after just a short while.

573
00:33:56,960 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: He felt that GES organization was twu cumbers him that

574
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: was filled with middle management positions, it was bloated, and

575
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: he felt his own work wasn't being valued properly. But

576
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: an executive named Ruben Gutoff convinced Welch to stay with

577
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: the company, so he did, and he would end up

578
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: leading the plastic division after working there for a while,

579
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: then he moved on to other executive roles. He oversaw

580
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 1: the Chemical and Metallurgical division, then he headed up GE

581
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: strategic planning. Then he became a sector executive for the

582
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:30,320
Speaker 1: consumer products division. And despite all of that, he wasn't

583
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 1: first and foremost in the minds of the board of

584
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 1: directors who were looking to fill that position of CEO.

585
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'll talk a little bit more

586
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 1: about how he got his position and what he did

587
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:52,200
Speaker 1: with it, but first let's take another quick break. Welch

588
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: was just one of seven people under consideration for the

589
00:34:56,320 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 1: role of g E CEO in nine He didn't even

590
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: have a formalized plan for where he wanted the company

591
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:05,399
Speaker 1: to go, but he did have the determination to lead

592
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: GE to being the number one company in every industry

593
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: in which GE had a presence. This was enough to

594
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: commence the board to name him CEO, and his first

595
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 1: moves were really to streamline g E. While he had

596
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: risen through the ranks in his decades at General Electric,

597
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: he still felt that the company was bloated. That opinion

598
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,319
Speaker 1: had not changed, even though he had gone from being

599
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:32,800
Speaker 1: an engineer to an executive at the time he assumed

600
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: the position of CEO. G E was a mega giant,

601
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 1: consisting of three hundred different businesses, and Welch saw that

602
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: as a problem because how could you focus and be

603
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:47,439
Speaker 1: the absolute best when your presence is spread so thin

604
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: across so many businesses. And so Welch began to consolidate departments.

605
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: He began to sell off divisions. He was trimming the fat.

606
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,879
Speaker 1: Part of that meant laying off employees, and Welch did

607
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 1: that too. He that a lot. By the mid nineteen eighties,

608
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 1: just a few years after he had become CEO g

609
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: E had laid off around one hundred twenty thousand employees.

610
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: This is hard for me to even imagine. The town

611
00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: I grew up in has a population of around forty

612
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: thousand people today. G E laid off three times as

613
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: many people as were in my hometown. That's tough for

614
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: me to even imagine. The layoffs earned Welch a nickname

615
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:33,239
Speaker 1: neutron Jack because he was like a neutron bomb going

616
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:36,280
Speaker 1: off in the company. He would eliminate employees while leaving

617
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: the corporate assets intact. A neutron bomb is thought of

618
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 1: as the same thing it's a sort of bomb that

619
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: can kill living stuff and leave physical infrastructure untouched. Welch

620
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: hated this nickname. It was a pretty cutthroat and brutal strategy,

621
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: but Welch was pretty much demanding that approach. He wanted

622
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 1: to get out of any business where g E did

623
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: not occupy the number one or number two spot in

624
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 1: the industry. If g were further behind them, that he

625
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:09,800
Speaker 1: would rather ditch that part of the business than to

626
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 1: continue to just sort of muddle along. It made little sense,

627
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 1: he said, to be in businesses where other companies could

628
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 1: go to market selling stuff cheaper than what it cost

629
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: GE to manufacture those same things in the first place.

630
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 1: So he gave an example of this. He talked about

631
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:28,320
Speaker 1: television sets and Schenecta in New York. They were still

632
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 1: making television sets when Jack Welch took over GE, but

633
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: Welch said that Japanese companies were selling TV sets for

634
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: less money to the final customer than it would cost

635
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: g E to manufacture a set. So Japanese television set

636
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: might sell for a hundred dollars and it might cost

637
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: a hundred ten dollars for g E to even make

638
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 1: a TV set there was no way to compete in

639
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:55,319
Speaker 1: that space and at all make a profit, so it

640
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: made no sense to keep the business. He preferred focusing

641
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:01,320
Speaker 1: the company's efforts on indus trees where they could outperform

642
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: their competitors, rather than remain in a business just to

643
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 1: have a foot in the door. Through a limiting divisions,

644
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:11,879
Speaker 1: selling off businesses, and through laying off thousands of employees,

645
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:14,279
Speaker 1: the company ended up saving a lot of money, to

646
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:18,319
Speaker 1: the tune of billions of dollars, and Welch wasn't just

647
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: going to sit on those savings. He looked to reinvest

648
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: in the company, and as part of that he was

649
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 1: looking for a possible acquisition, and he decided upon an old,

650
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 1: familiar name. That name was R c A. Now, if

651
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: you listen to the earlier GE episodes, or if you

652
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 1: listen to my r c A episodes, you'll remember that

653
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:41,280
Speaker 1: General Electric was one of the founding companies that created

654
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: our CIA in the first place. GE was also the

655
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: majority shareholder until it was compelled to sell off those

656
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 1: shares of our CIA along with the other founders. This

657
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: was because the United States government at the time had

658
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: antitrust concerns about the radio industry. Well. The merger of

659
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:00,800
Speaker 1: g E and r c A was a six point

660
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: three billion dollar deal, which was the largest in history

661
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: at that point, and Welch took the same approach to

662
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 1: our CIA as he had to GE. Namely, he began

663
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: hacking away at businesses he viewed as being distractions. So

664
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: within three years of this deal, Welch had reduced the

665
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 1: number of our CIA employees to half of what they

666
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 1: once were. He oversaw r c A selling off almost

667
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:27,839
Speaker 1: all of its businesses. Really only two remained. One was

668
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: the defense business that our ci A would do for

669
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:33,879
Speaker 1: the U. S Military and also for NASA. The other

670
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: was the NBC television network, So this was the time

671
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:41,239
Speaker 1: when GE would own NBC. This was a subject that

672
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 1: become a frequent plot point on the TV series Thirty Rock.

673
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: It's also when our c A effectively just became a name.

674
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: It was no longer the company at once was, So

675
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 1: if you listen to the r c A episodes, this

676
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 1: is pretty much at the point where the r c

677
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 1: A story ended. Working for Welch was really off. If

678
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: you were really good at your job, and your job

679
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: was in a division that Welch viewed as being central

680
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: to g e s mission you had decent job security.

681
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 1: Welch had employees go through regular performance reviews, and the

682
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: employees who were in the top twenty would get bonuses.

683
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: Those who were in the bottom ten percent were likely

684
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 1: to get fired and holy cats did. His strategy pushed

685
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: GE to new heights. The company became known as the

686
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:31,479
Speaker 1: House that Jack built. The stock price for GE rose

687
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:36,320
Speaker 1: four thousand per cent. Meanwhile, the company was still churning

688
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: out innovations such as groundbreaking work and fiber optics and

689
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: magnetic resonance imaging systems. The company also launched the Consumer

690
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:48,719
Speaker 1: News and Business Channel or c NBC, in nine so

691
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a powerful company in industry, it was

692
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: now also becoming a powerful media company. One other area

693
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 1: Welch pushed g E into was financial services. With GE Capital,

694
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:05,279
Speaker 1: Welch led acquisition efforts to buy foreign banks, and GE

695
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,760
Speaker 1: also would become a major insurance provider. These services were

696
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: at the time remarkably profitable. In fact, that's an understatement.

697
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: When Welch took over GE, the company's value was fourteen

698
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: billion dollars. By the time Welch would retire in two

699
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:24,919
Speaker 1: thousand one, the company's value was an excess of four

700
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: hundred ten billion dollars, and a large part of that

701
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,720
Speaker 1: was due to the profitability of the financial services during

702
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: that time. Also, we have to say that when this happened,

703
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: it was a brilliant move from a business perspective. He

704
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 1: pushed GE to new heights and it made Welch a

705
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:45,360
Speaker 1: very wealthy man. It would also end up being the

706
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: major pain point for GE several years later that I'm

707
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,399
Speaker 1: going to get to that in our next episode as

708
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:54,320
Speaker 1: it begins to play into the more recent allegations about

709
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: g E and its accounting practices. But before we get

710
00:41:57,320 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: to those dark tidings, let's finish up with some of

711
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 1: the tech things that the company was doing under Welch's

712
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 1: command in n g E, through its r c A

713
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:10,359
Speaker 1: Space division, delivered the Mars Observer to NASA. It had

714
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: been seventeen years since NASA had sent a spacecraft to

715
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: study Mars, so the intent was to launch the Mars

716
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: Observer and insert it into an orbit around the red planet.

717
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: The Mars Observer had instruments meant to study the climate, geophysics,

718
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: and the geology of Mars. The launch went off beautifully

719
00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:32,759
Speaker 1: on September n The orbiter began its long journey to

720
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: Mars and that would take nearly a full year, and

721
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 1: on August twenty one, NINETEE, just a couple of days

722
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 1: before the orbiter was meant to officially enter Mars orbit,

723
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 1: all communication was lost between the spacecraft and Earth. NASA

724
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: was unable to re establish contact, so the mission was

725
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,160
Speaker 1: ultimately a failure, though NASA was at least able to

726
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:57,879
Speaker 1: learn some things through the process of sending the orbiter

727
00:42:58,000 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: to Mars in the first place, but none of the

728
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: primary mission objectives were achieved. In nine in another move

729
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: to dominate media, NBC and Microsoft partner together to launch

730
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:14,759
Speaker 1: the twenty four hour news channel ms NBC. In g

731
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 1: E began to adhere to a quality control strategy called

732
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: six Sigma, which calls for fewer than three defects per

733
00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:26,440
Speaker 1: million opportunities. Now. To achieve that goal, GE would spend

734
00:43:26,640 --> 00:43:30,839
Speaker 1: millions of dollars on training and new production processes, so

735
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: it was a very expensive and time consuming effort, but

736
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:37,840
Speaker 1: Welch's view was that it would ultimately benefit the company

737
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 1: and result in massive savings. Fewer defects would mean less waste.

738
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: The first product from GE to go through this process

739
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: was a medical scanner called the light Speed q X

740
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: slash i CT system. In GE secured a contract with

741
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: Boeing to build massive, powerful jet engines for Boeing seven

742
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: seventy seven line of jets. The company produced the g

743
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 1: E nine D family. Now, this is not the only

744
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 1: type of engine used on a seven seventy seven. There's

745
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:10,239
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different variations of the seven seventy seven,

746
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 1: and some of them use engines from other companies, So

747
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:15,720
Speaker 1: it all depends upon the version of the seven seventy

748
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 1: seven you're looking at, but it is the largest and

749
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 1: most powerful jet engine produced to date. In g E

750
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 1: opened a new research lab. This one is called GE

751
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:30,240
Speaker 1: Global Research. It's located in Bangalore, India, and this marked

752
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: an effort for g E to not just expand its

753
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 1: overseas markets, which it had been doing for the previous decades,

754
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: but also to attract new talent in the field of technology,

755
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,400
Speaker 1: talent that wasn't just located in Europe or the United States.

756
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: In two thousand, the company unveiled the TM twenty hundred,

757
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:50,280
Speaker 1: which is a power plant on wheels. It's a gas

758
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 1: turbine generator that can supply twenty two point eight megawatts

759
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: of electricity. Takes a couple of days to set up

760
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 1: once it's on location, and it's used for lots of

761
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: different purposes, and looting has a way to supply electricity

762
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:05,760
Speaker 1: to areas that have been affected by natural disasters. Gas turbines,

763
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:07,719
Speaker 1: by the way, work in a very similar way to

764
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: jet engines. You've got a compressor that draws air into

765
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:13,880
Speaker 1: the engine. The air gets compressed, and that's what a

766
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: compressor does, and then it enters into the combustion chamber

767
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:21,320
Speaker 1: where it combines with fuel from fuel injectors. This mixture

768
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:24,320
Speaker 1: gets ignited and then it burns at a very high temperature.

769
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: It generates high temperature, high pressure gas. The gas moves

770
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: out of the combustion chamber into a turbine section. That's

771
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: where the gas can expand and escape, and as it

772
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: does so, the force of that escaping expanding gas turns

773
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: a turbine. The turbine does two things. One, it drives

774
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,080
Speaker 1: the compressor, so it pulls in more air and thus

775
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 1: keeps the process going as long as you have fuel

776
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: to burn. And it also spends a generator to create electricity.

777
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,760
Speaker 1: Jack Welch planned to retire from ge and two thousand

778
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: but one thing kept him around a little bit longer.

779
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: That thing was a prize Welch really wanted for GE.

780
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:03,919
Speaker 1: There was a company called Honeywell International. Now. Honeywell makes

781
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 1: advanced electronics for the aviation industry, among other things, and

782
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 1: Welch led a forty billion dollar plus acquisition effort to

783
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: get this company. He knew that Honeywell had another suitor,

784
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: that of United Technologies Corporation, and he added a promise

785
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 1: to Honeywell that he would stay on with GE until

786
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,840
Speaker 1: this acquisition was complete. He would delay his retirement until

787
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 1: two thousand one. So they decided they would pursue this

788
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,760
Speaker 1: acquisition deal and things were going pretty well. The United

789
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: States seemed fully on board, but then you get to

790
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand one, and that's when European

791
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 1: regulators expressed concern that this merger would stifle competition in

792
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: the industry. Welch reportedly reached out to US government officials

793
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 1: to see if anything could be done to smooth things

794
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: out and get the deal approved. This had the effect

795
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: of royally taking off those regulators, and ultimately the European

796
00:46:56,640 --> 00:47:01,680
Speaker 1: Union denied authorization for this merger, and the deal fell apart. Welch,

797
00:47:01,719 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: who hated losing, lost this one. The CEO of Honeywell,

798
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: Michael Bunt Sire, was shown the door not long after

799
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:13,040
Speaker 1: the deal was scrapped, and Welch would continue on towards

800
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:16,840
Speaker 1: his retirement. Jack Welch stepped down as CEO of g

801
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:21,319
Speaker 1: E on September seven, two thousand one. His replacement would

802
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 1: be Jeffrey R. Emilt, and just four days after Emilt

803
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 1: would take the helm of g E, the terrorist attacks

804
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 1: on the United States on September eleven would change the

805
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:36,839
Speaker 1: company's course. We'll talk about how that happened in our

806
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: next episode. In the meantime, if you have a suggestion

807
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:42,640
Speaker 1: for a future episode of tech Stuff, whether it's a company,

808
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:46,439
Speaker 1: a technology, just a concept in tech, anything like that,

809
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: let me know. You can send me an email the

810
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com or

811
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:55,359
Speaker 1: pop on over to tech Stuff podcast dot com. That's

812
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: where you're gonna find the archive of all of our

813
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:02,319
Speaker 1: past episodes, all one thousand, one hundred sixty plus of them,

814
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:04,440
Speaker 1: and you'll also find links to where we are on

815
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:07,360
Speaker 1: social media, as well as a link to our online store,

816
00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 1: where every purchase you make goes to help the show.

817
00:48:10,040 --> 00:48:12,800
Speaker 1: We greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again

818
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production.

819
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:25,239
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i

820
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:28,600
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

821
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.