A Couple of Bright Stars

The patent for the original Edison lamp expired in 1894 along with other early patents that had expired or lost value because of later advances.  General Electric still controlled most of the incandescent lamp sales in the United States, but surprisingly, gaslighting and electricity continued to be competitive.  General Electric needed new ideas, new materials, and new products.

Wallis Whitney, the new President of GE said, "the panic and depression of 1893-96 had shaken down...the pioneer days had largely passed by 1890.  We had learned there was a field for the various applications of electricity...but the opinion generally held no radically new ideas could arise.  As far as we could see copper...carbon would always remain the best materials." 

Whitney first worked in Schenectady in a barn in back of Charles Steinmetz's house. where they organized a laboratory and added a great number of working scientists.  One of those scientists was William D. Coolidge, a poor farm boy from Massachusetts who also attended MIT as had Whitney, who also studied in Leipzig as had Whitney, and also returned to MIT to teach as had Whitney.  

Coolidge joined Whitney and Steinmetz at General Electric in 1908.  Within three years, Coolidge had invented a process for making tungsten filaments, making the electric lamp two and a half times more efficient.  Coolidge went on to develop the cathode tube for the X-ray and gave General Electric the lead in the new science of X-rays.

Another scientist with the original lab was Irving Langmuir, who worked on everything from light bulbs to vacuum tubes for radios, to a new theory on atomic energy.  No one intended these discoveries, like most research and development, they were the result of looking for a solution to an entirely different problem.  

According to Whitney, it was his research laboratory's responsibility to come up with new discoveries to grow General Electric - he called it "the properly engineered manufacturing system."  Out of Whitney's research lab in those early years came discoveries that made possible the electric stove, underwater submarine detection and improvements in a host of other products.  To Whitney, change was real and R & D made that happen.

Next time...Whitney's Philosophy

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Today in Pioneer History: "On May 18, 1874,  Kiowa Chief Santana, a fearsome warrior and skilled orator and diplomat, who helped establish the reservation in present day Oklahoma, led a force of Indians to massacre a wagon train in northeastern Texas.  Santana resisted the government efforts to force the Kiowa into smaller areas and give up their nomadic ways and it culminated in tragedy.  He died by suicide in a Texas prison in 1878, still protesting the United States treatment of the Indian natives.