GE
GE continued to innovate as our needs grew more complex. Responding to natural resource issues, GE developed new materials with a broad range of applications, from XENOY resin to the invention of fiber optic cable. In medicine, GE invented the Sigma Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology and Human Body Scanning with Computed Tomography for faster, clearer imaging of the human body.
Consumer convenience takes another step forward with the first portable room air conditioner: the Carry-Cool®. This portable unit brings air-conditioned comfort to smaller spaces and temporary events.
Partnering with French aero designers, the core technology of GE's F101 engine and French fan technology result in CFM International's CFM56, the world's most successful aircraft engine, with a CFM56 powered takeoff taking place every five seconds. Meanwhile, GE moves into the civil market for high-bypass turbofan engines, making the the most popular engine for wide-body aircraft, including Air Force One.
GE's Dr. Ivar Giaever receives the 1973 Nobel Prize for physics for his 1960 discovery of superconductive tunneling. This simple, yet startling, effect — the quantum physics equivalent of throwing a baseball through a brick wall — opens up a new field of research and the technology to visualize atoms and detect minuscule magnetic fields.
A computed tomography scanner developed by a team from GE's Research and Development Center and the Medical Systems Division takes detailed cross-section X-ray pictures of the human body in less than 5 seconds — 4 to 60 times faster than other total body scanners in use. The high speed minimizes image blurring due to patient motion and provides superior detail.
GE makes the morning a little easier with the first programmable digital clock radio, allowing you to wake up to music at the time you set...reliably.
In the kitchen, GE continues to make food preparation faster, easier and more convenient with the introduction of the FP-1 and FP-2 food processors that reduce the time for many food preparation chores to seconds, and with the space-saving SpaceMaker®, the first over-the-range microwave.
GE marks 100 Years of Technological Innovation. A record total of 865 new U.S. patents are awarded during GE's centennial year. Little wonder, then, that GE becomes the first organization in history to be assigned its fifty-thousandth U.S. patent.
GE Lighting produces 3 ft. long fused quartz ingots that can be drawn into fiber optic strands 25 miles in length. This invention marks the beginning of the fiber optics revolution in communications.
GE Scientists develop the Signa Magnetic Resonance Imaging System. The system is based on a giant superconducting magnet with a highly uniform field 30,000 times as strong as that of earth. It produces cross-sectional images of internal body structures with unprecedented detail and clarity, particularly for "soft" tissues difficult or impossible to image by X-ray methods.