General Electric
Tech's Filing Cabinet Miscellaneous General Electric RCA Tube Tech Semi Tech Audio Radio Components

Here are various documents from the General Electric Corporation (GE). Some are internal documents and some are for the general public. Common documents such as Tube Manuals are not included here; they are available from many sites on the web, such as Pete Millett's site. Individual tube data sheets are available at Frank Philipse's tubedata.org site.

As described in the provenance link to the left, these documents came from employees in the General Electric Cathode Ray Tube Department in GE's Electronics Park, Syracuse, New York. Most of the documents relate to CRTs and picture tubes, but there are many documents from other divisions within GE. It becomes clear that any department within GE had access to a vast array of industrial and R&D resources within the company. The "Technical Information Series" of bulletins are an example of this, but there is a separate category here for other non-CRT documents, catagorized below as "Pan-GE" documents.


Electronics 1948 The Editors Report on Electronics Park - From the October 1948 Electronics, the editors get an inside view of the new high-tech corporate park just outside of Syracuse, New York. Electronics Park is a greenfield site that consolidated General Electric's various electronics activities in a college campus-like setting with good access to transportation and not too far from the technical headquarters in Schenectady, New York. Its planning was started in 1942, but but the first buildings were not started until September 1945. At the time of this 1948 article, the products made here included consumer radios and TVs, mobile communications, transmitters, and government electronics. Later the park would produce CRTs and semiconductors. Operations at the Electronics Park were wound-down during the tenure of "Neutron Jack" Welch (CEO) and the park was sold to Martin Marietta in 1992. An interesting article that gets a very inside look at GE's post-war goals and operations. Extracted from scans by AmericanRadioHistory.com.

Cathode Ray Tube Dept 1958 Syracuse Factory Brochure - Undated, but guess about 1957-58 based on the tubes being made. Description of Building 6 and a nice summary of GE's picture tube operation.

GE Research Lab Skills and Facilities of the Metallurgy and Ceramics Research Department - Undated, but likely the late 1950s or early 1960s. A very slick brochure touting the capabilities of the Ceramics and Metallurgy Research Dept. This is from back when companies did serious and extensive R & D.


GE Technical Information Series - The GE "Technical Information Series" of reports were curated by General Electric's Corporate Research and Development group in Schenectady, New York. These reports were written by the various departments of GE and were distributed widely throughout the company.


GE Trip Reports - These were made by members of the CRT Department and were either visits for technology exchange, visits to vendors to work on particular projects, or visits to other divisions within GE to get educated on GE's technologies. Many of the other tube companies visited likely had cross-licensing agreements, but some didn't. The degree of cooperation is striking (in most cases).


GE CRT Dept. Internal Memos - Memos from the CRT Department that don't fall in to the other categories such as trip reports, government-funded reports, or the Talaria Project.


Pan-GE Documents - GE documents from outside the CRT department.


GE Data Folders - These are in-house reports on research or experiments done in the tube department from 1938 to 1946. Most cover very specific issues, but a few are quite general.


Government-Funded Reports - Some of the CRT Department's R&D was funded by government contracts. Here are reports identified as such. Most of these reports include biographies of the developers and descriptions of facilities.


Talaria Project - A television projector derived from the Eidophor projector. Really pushed the technology - project started in 1959 and shipped in 1983!


GE Product Data & Application Notes - Public data and application notes for various GE products.