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