The Natural Harmony of Organic Architecture

The Natural Harmony of Organic Architecture Organic Architecture is a term that American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) used to describe his environmentally integrated approach to architectural design. The philosophy grew from the ideas of Wrights mentor, Louis Sullivan, who believed that form follows function. Wright argued that form and function are one. Author Jà ³sean Figueroa argues that Wrights philosophy grew from the American Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Organic architecture strives to unify space, to blend interiors and exteriors, and create a harmonic built environment not separate or dominant from nature but as a unified whole. Frank Lloyd Wrights own homes, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona, exemplify the architects theories of organic architecture and lifestyle Wright was not concerned with architectural style, because he believed that every building should grow naturally from its environment. Nevertheless, Wrights architectural elements found in the prairie house - overhanging eaves, clerestory windows, one-story rambling open floor plans - are elements found in many of Wrights designs. In Spring Green, the structure Wright designed that is now the Taliesin Visitors Center is like a bridge or a dock on the Wisconsin River: the roofline of Taliesin West follows the Arizona hills, stepping in downward paths toward pools of liquid desert. Wrights architecture seeks harmony with the land, be it desert or prairie. Definition of Organic Architecture A philosophy of architectural design, emerging in the early 20th cent., asserting that in structure and appearance a building should be based on organic forms and should harmonize with its natural environment. - Dictionary of Architecture and Construction Modernist Approaches to Organic Design In the last half of the twentieth century, Modernist architects took the concept of organic architecture to new heights. By using new forms of concrete and cantilever trusses, architects could create swooping arches without visible beams or pillars. Parque Gà ¼ell and many other works by the Spanish Antoni Gaudà ­ have been called organic. Modern organic buildings are never linear or rigidly geometric. Instead, wavy lines and curved shapes suggest natural forms. Classic examples of modernist approaches to organic architecture include the Sydney Opera House by Danish architect Jà ¸rn Utzon and the Dulles International Airport with its swooping, wing-like roofs by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. Modern approaches are less concerned with integrating architecture within the surrounding environment as did Frank Lloyd Wright. The World Trade Center Transportation Hub by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava may well represent a modernist approach to organic architecture. The white-winged Oculus is an organic form in the center of a new complex of towers, and memorial pools, is how Architectural Digest described it, at the sites of the two that fell in 2001. Taliesin as Organic Architecture Wrights ancestry was Welsh, and Taliesin is a Welsh word. Taliesin, a Druid, was a member of King Arthurs Round Table, Wright has said. It means shining brow and this place now called Taliesin is built like a brow on the edge of the hill, not on top of the hill because I believe you should never build on top of anything directly. If you build on top of the hill, you lose the hill. If you build on one side of the top, you have the hill and the eminence that you desire. You see? Well, Taliesin is a brow like that. Houses should not be boxes set together row on row. If a house is to be architecture, it must become a natural part of the landscape. The land is the simplest form of architecture, wrote Frank Lloyd Wright. Both Taliesin properties are organic because their designs adapt to the environment. Horizontal lines mimic the horizontal range of hills and shoreline. The slope of a roof mimics the slope of the land. If you cant get to tour the Wright homes in Wisconsin and Arizona, perhaps a short trip to southern  Pennsylvania would illuminate the nature of organic architecture. Many people have heard of Fallingwater, the private home nestled on top of a hillside stream. Through the use of modern materials - steel and glass - cantilever construction enabled the structure to appear like smooth concrete stones skipping along the Bear Run waterfalls. Very near Fallingwater, another Wright-designed home, Kentuck Knob, may be more landlocked than its neighbor, yet the roof almost becomes the forest floor as one walks around the house. These two homes alone exemplify organic architecture and construction at Wrights best. So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but - instead - exalting the simple laws of common sense  - or of super-sense if you prefer - determining form by way of the nature of materials... - Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture, 1939 Sources The Philosophy of Organic Architecture by Jà ³sean Figueroa,  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014Organic Architecture: The Other Modernism by Alan Hess, Gibbs Smith, 2006New Organic Architecture: The Breaking Wave by David Pearson, University of California Press; 2001The Future of Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright, New American Library, Horizon Press, 1953, pp. 21, 41Dictionary of Architecture and Construction edited by Cyril M Harris, McGraw-Hill, 1975, pp. 340-341Santiago Calatrava Explains How He Designed the Oculus For Future Generations by Elizabeth Fazzare, Architectural Digest online posted October 24, 2017, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/santiago-calatrava-explains-designed-oculus-for-future-generations

Gun Rights, Gun Control, and Frequently Asked Questions

Gun Rights, Gun Control, and Frequently Asked Questions After nearly every instance of gun violence, talk of new gun control measures heats up. Here we will answer a number of the most frequently asked questions about guns and gun control and a conservative take on why conservatives oppose most new gun control measures. Many Conservatives want to allow school staff to be armed. Wouldn’t allowing guns in schools increase the chance of gun violence? The argument that letting certain trained and certified school officials carry guns will create a â€Å"dangerous† situation is without merit. After all, President Obamas own children go to an elite school with an armed security detail and the school itself has over a dozen guards, mostly made up of trained police officers. Given the elite nature of the school, it is likely that they are armed as well. Of course, there is the reality that we live in a â€Å"do-as-I-say† world where elite politicians send their kids to elite (and armed!) private schools on one hand while doing everything in their power to prevent the lower and middle class from doing the same, sentencing children to time in failing public schools. Beyond the hypocrisy of the ruling elites, gun control advocates argue that the presence of guns could force the escalation of a teacher-student argument into a dangerous situation. I’m not sure why escalation would be limited to a â€Å"gun.† If a school official was driven to the point of drawing a gun, what prevents them from losing it without a gun and attack students in a different way? Wouldn’t they just find a different weapon? Yet there does not appear to be an epidemic of crazy teachers violently attacking students. If our teachers are deranged, then what would stop them from bringing a gun to school even if it were a â€Å"gun free zone†? But this doesn’t happen. Responsible gun owners are rarely the problem with guns. This doesn’t mean we should arm every teacher. In reality, the need for a school official to take action is rare, despite what the media has us believe. But it might be nice in case they were needed. We are told to blame the person and not the gun, but then some argue to blame â€Å"Hollywood† instead. How does that make sense? Advertisers pay millions of dollars to run 30-second television ads and place products predominantly in movies and entertainment programming. Athletes, actors, and singers sign multi-million dollar endorsement deals to publicly support products. Why would a soda company pay for a popular TV character to simply drink from their can during a television show if it had no effect on consumer behavior? (And note that the â€Å"key demographic† for advertising is 18-34 year-old males because they are the most likely to be influenced such advertising.) It’s illegal to run a 30 second television commercial selling cigarettes because it might make kids want to smoke cigarettes. And television shows – and even car commercials – often come with a warning to â€Å"not try this at home.† Why? Because they know people will. Oh, and they will do it regardless of the warning. Now, this is not to say that Hollywood is at fault. But there is a dangerous element when you inundate and desensitize to violence an entire segment of the population. Mix the culture with a person with mental illness and it can become a dangerous situation. Ultimately, individuals are responsible. But we can’t on one hand say that the culture has no effect on behavior when we all know that is not the case. What responsibility does the NRA have in gun control? The NRA supports and teaches responsible gun ownership to people of all ages. They teach classes on gun safety, self-defense, and proper gun usage techniques. They do not promote violence. In fact, they speak out against the entertainment culture that regularly promotes guns and gun violence in a glorified manner. I’d also guess that the problem with gun violence is not among people who are members of the NRA. After all, if they were, we would hear about it. Why does it seem the conservatives’ solution to every gun-related problem is â€Å"more guns†? That can be answered simply by asking another question: Where does crime and mass shooting tragedies happen most frequently? Not surprisingly, in â€Å"gun-free zones.† Notice that mass shooters never head to a police station in hoped of killing or terrorizing people. No, they head to â€Å"gun-free zone† schools or movie theatres with â€Å"no firearms† signs posted everywhere. Criminals will always take the path of least resistance. If a criminal drove upon two streets, one where guns were outlawed and the other were it was mandatory every house had a gun owner, which neighborhood will the criminal rob? It can also be true that a law that mandates gun ownership – yet where no-one in the neighborhood actually owns a gun – can prevent crime as the robber doesn’t know who does and who does not own a gun. And perhaps a school that not only drops the â€Å"gun-free† premise but teaches classes on gun safety and has a shooting range will not be high on a deranged person’s list to go to. But again, it’s also important to stress that such occurrences are very rare in the first place.

Definition a glance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Definition a glance - Essay Example Unlike before when personal conversations are rather necessitated for important discussions, today, agreements can already be achieved using social networking sites, e-mail, and text messaging. Moreover, business activities are greatly upheaved; production level has risen. Newly invented machines like the automated guided vehicles and industrial robots make significant contributions to the economy. These technologies have maintained the level of productivity and provided more accuracy considering that these technologies can work non-stop with precision, which precludes the delays thereby ensuring business profit. Lastly, technological innovation has also affected human behaviour and ethics. Due to the prevalent availability of and the ease of access to the internet, more people are using this means to conduct illegal trades. In developing countries, cybersex is rampant – utilizing minors to carry out profane online businesses. What is worst is that more people have become fascinated with such kinds of activity because of how easy earnings can be obtained. Technological innovation is a good manifestation of modernization. This means that people have adopted avant-gardism and modernistic views. While technology brings so much improvement in our economy, lifestyle, healthcare, etc.; nevertheless, sometimes, it is also being used in the wrong way. The bottom line, however, is that technological innovation inspired so many transformations in the society: good and bad. â€Å"For a long time I used to go to bed early (Lawall, 2003)† is the well-known opening of the novel. The speaker tells his episodic encounters of arising from slumber without having any perception of his present state or location. It demands an instant of strain of establishing his thoughts and reclaiming his ego. It also suggests at the point where what comes next will involve the speaker with regaining back his identity, locating himself, and

Political Economy of Work and Health in Silicon Valley Case Study - 8

Political Economy of Work and Health in Silicon Valley - Case Study Example Santa Clara County was originally one of the counties of California and formed part of statehood. When California was added to the United States in 1848, Santa Clara County attracted many other towns around it after the gold rush. The towns were supply centers for California’s gold rush dealers. A brief description of the Chinese Immigrant and Native Americans The Chinese immigrants first came to America in 1838 and the inflow peaked in 1850. The Chinese were flocking to California for the gold rush. It was difficult to assimilate Chinese into Native American culture. While in America, they maintained their ways, but their culture was considered by Native Americans as inferior. A brief description of the â€Å"Temp Slave† Economy Tempt slave economy is a new promise for personal freedom and individual creativity. It provides new ways of jobs creation in which one can design out of temporary consulting engagement and employment. In temp slave, people must volunteer to be employed and offer employment to others.

Effects of Jejemon Essay Example for Free

Effects of Jejemon Essay Jejemons, are you one of them? Recently, someone tagged me in a weird photo in facebook showing Jejemon†¦I never knew that freakin word and didn’t care until I saw on the news what they are, what it means and why the hell it’s being aired everywhere. Well, at least in Phil. This hub is all about Jejemon. What is Jejemon? What is Jejemon really? It was derived from two words jeje (from â€Å"hehe† means laughter) and mon (a Japanese-influenced suffix in Pokemon)Jejemons are the people who laugh â€Å"Jejejeje† instead of â€Å"heheheh† in Pinoy SMS. Jejemons has multiplied through chatrooms, online games, social networks and widely in mobile texting. They became a popular subculture because they make their own rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar. They type words in the virtual world by alternating capital and small letters, adding H, Z etc. So weird that only their group could understand. dHeY tYpe wOrdz lYk diZs **To view their website visit Jejemon.com Jejemon became so controversial and often, it creates debates discussing the advantages anddisadvantages of Jejemon. Good Effects of Jejemon * Gives pleasure to a social group. Jejemons became a tribe, so if you are one of them, you tend to enjoy like them. I can’t object and I’m not against them but I know every gang or sorority brings pleasure to anyone in a way he feels he belongs†¦ * Secret codes. If you’re a Jejemon, you definitely know how to speak and how to communicate with them. Only you and your folks can understand each other pretty well. So maybe, in times of secrecy, you can converse using your special terms. * The feeling of freedom. If  you’re a proud Jejemon, it also means you don’t care about anti-Jejemon critics. It’s a sign that you are liberated from what others would think. Bad Effects of Jejemon * You forget your main language. Whatever it is, English or Filipino, if you’re a Jejemon, you always speak with it, so you get used to it. Your other dialects are set aside. Oftentimes, it will let you forget the right spelling or grammar in English or Filipino. * Jologs status. (Ok Jejemons don’t freak out) Jologs, just like Jejemon, is a term used to denote low class group who are majority from the province towns, often times termed as â€Å"tambay† Jologs is a label of no-care to the world of etiquette or whatever is prim and proper for that matter. * Outcast. Jejemons unfortunately are not widely accepted in the nation so if someone sort of suspects he’s talking to one, he won’t talk with him again or be a friend with him. A perfect example would be what I’ve read from a site that says, â€Å"OMG you’re a Jejemon! Bye!† Because of it, Jejemon has been a big social issue. * Difficult to read. All would agree it’s frea king hard to read Jejemon words. Sample Jejemon words and phrases eOw poHw! (hello po) xInU pOe xLa? (sino po sila) jejejeje (heheheh) Do Jejemons annoy you? - Top of Form * Yup so annoying! * No, they are cool. Bottom of Form See results without voting Do Jejemons annoy you? DepEd (Department of Education) discourage everyone using such grammar because of the obvious effects. A lot of groups have grown also to combat Jejemons, they areJejebusters, Anti-jeje, GOTTA KILL ‘EM ALL JEJEMON and many more. Surprisingly, the term â€Å"Jejemon† won the word of the year inSawikaan 2010 over nine other entries, by the University of the Philippines academic group in Diliman, Quezon City organized by the Filipinas Institute of Translation. I have no problem with Jejemons and they don’t annoy me at all because I don’t talk/text to anyone of their kind.

Original Narrative Anticipated :: essays research papers

Original Narrative: Anticipated Crisis With the end of the millenium right around the corner, the statement coined by Rene Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," no longer holds true. This is mostly due to the emergence of monumental technological breakthroughs since the formulation of this statement in the seventeenth century. In fact, "I have technology, therefore I am" and "My God said so, therefore I am" could be contemporary versions of this statement that accurately describe us today. In the past, one was free to think for himself, or forced to think for himself, because no one else or nothing else could think for him. The rise in the use of computers this century, however, has revolutionized the way things are done. Those who own the technology no longer have to "think" about menial tasks. For example, when one buys a product in a store for $1.38 and hands the cashier a five-dollar bill, the cashier will punch in the five dollars and let the computerized cash register indicate the correct change of $3.62 to give to the customer. No thinking on the part of a person is involved. Instead, it is substituted by a reliance on mechanical and repetitious actions which are unproductive and unhealthy for the mind. We human beings are blessed with the capability to reason and to think logically; therefore, we cannot function as subservient individuals to the modern technology that we have created. Our growing reverence for technology and its comforts will ultimate ly strip us of our creativity and our curiosity to learn. This ultimately obviates the need to make decisions based on our own judgments because computers will take care of everything with a touch of a button. Obviously, once the computers malfunction, life as we know it will be in chaos since we would not be able to survive without the complex gadgets. Furthermore, as economic stability becomes more uncertain, the destitute and despondent masses will turn to religion and their God for consolation. Although this seems paradoxical in a time when the degradation of society is eminent, "I think, therefore I am" could be justly altered into "My God says so, therefore I am" to match the social atmosphere of today. These people are all foolishly deceived into thinking that they are notorious sinners who must incessantly repent now in order to enter the "kingdom" of Heaven later. Evidently, these desperate believers are again subordinate to a "supreme being" who has supposedly intended the present hopelessness to test the loyalty of those who perceive that "He" is omnipotent and is looking out for our best interests.

General Electric Essay

The history of General Electric Company is a significant part of the history of technology in the United States. General Electric (GE) has evolved from Thomas Edison’s home laboratory into one of the largest companies in the world, following the evolution of electrical technology from the simplest early applications into the high-tech wizardry of the early 21st century. The company has also evolved into a conglomerate, with an increasing shift from technology to services, and with 11 main operating units: GE Advanced Materials, a specialist in high-performance engineered thermoplastics, silicon-based products, and fused quartz and ceramics used in a wide variety of industries; GE Consumer & Industrial, which is one of the world’s leading appliance manufacturers, stands as a preeminent global maker of lighting products for consumer, commercial, and industrial customers, and also provides integrated industrial equipment, systems, and services; GE Energy, one of the largest technology suppliers to the energy industry; GE Equipment Services, which offers leases, loans, and other services to medium and large businesses around the world to help them manage their business equipment; GE Healthcare, a world leader in medical diagnostic and interventional imaging technology and services; GE Infrastructure, which is involved in high-technology protectiv e and productivity solutions in such areas as water purification, facility safety, plant automation, and automatic environmental controls; GE Transportation, the largest producer of small and large jet engines for commercial and military aircraft in the world, as well as the number one maker of diesel freight locomotives in North America; NBC Universal (80 percent owned by GE), a global media and entertainment giant with a wide range of assets, including the NBC and Telemundo television networks, several cable channels, and the Universal Pictures film studio; GE Commercial Finance, which provides businesses, particularly in the mid-market segment, with an array of financial services and products, including loans, operating leases, and financing programs; GE Consumer Finance, a leading financial services provider, serving consumers, retailers, and auto dealer in about three dozen countries; and GE Insurance, which is involved in such areas as life insurance, asset management, mortgag e insurance, and reinsurance. The staggering size of GeneralElectric, which ranked fifth in the Fortune 500 in 2003, becomes even more evident through the revelation that each of the company’s 11 operating units, if listed separately, would qualify as a Fortune 500 company. GE operates in more than 100 countries worldwide and generates approximately 45 percent of its revenues outside the United States. Over the course of its 110-plus years of innovation, General Electric has amassed more than 67,500 patents, and the firm’s scientists have been awarded two Nobel Prizes and numerous other honors. Thomas Edison established himself in the 1870s as an inventor after devising, at the age of 23, an improved stock ticker. He subsequently began research on an electric light as a replacement for gas light, the standard method of illumination at the time. In 1876 Edison moved into a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Two years later, in 1878, Edison established, with the help of his friend Grosvenor Lowry, the Edison Electric Light Company with a capitalization of $300,000. Edison received half of the new company’s shares on the agreement that he work on developing an incandescent lighting system. The major problem Edison and his team of specialists faced was finding an easy-to-produce filament that would resist the passage of electrical current in the bulb for a long time. H e triumphed only a year after beginning research when he discovered that common sewing thread, once carbonized, worked in the laboratory. For practical applications, however, he switched to carbonized bamboo. Developing an electrical lighting system for a whole community involved more than merely developing an electric bulb; the devices that generated, transmitted, and controlled electric power also had to be invented. Accordingly, Edison organized research into all of these areas and in 1879, the same year that he produced an electric bulb, he also constructed the first dynamo, or direct-current (DC) generator. The original application of electric lighting was on the steamship Columbia in 1880. In that same year, Edison constructed a three-mile-long trial electric railroad at his Menlo Park laboratory. The first individual system of electric lighting came in 1881, in a printing plant. But the first full-scale public application of the Edison lighting system was actually made in Lon don, at the Holborn Viaduct. The first system in the United States came soon after when Pearl Street Station was opened in New York City. Components of the system were manufactured by different companies, some of which were organized by Edison; lamps came from theparent company, dynamos from the Edison Machine Works, and switches from Bergmann & Company of New York. In 1886 the Edison Machine Works was moved from New Jersey to Schenectady, New York. While these developments unfolded at Edison’s company, the Thomson-Houston Company was formed from the American Electric Company, founded by Elihu Thomson and Edwin Houston, who held several patents for their development of arc lighting. Some of their electrical systems differed from Edison’s through the use of alternating-current (AC) equipment, which can transmit over longer distances than DC systems. By the early 1890s the spread of electrification was threatened by the conflict between the two technologies and by patent deadlocks, which prevented further developments because of patent-infringement problems. By 1889, Edison had consolidated all of his companies under the name of Edison General Electric Company. Three years later, in 1892, this company was merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form the General Electric Company. Although this merger was the turning point in the electrification of the United States, it resulted in Edison’s resignati on from GE. He had been appointed to the board of directors but he attended only one board meeting, and sold all of his shares in 1894, though he remained a consultant to General Electric and continued to collect royalties on his patents. The president of the new company was Charles A. Coffin, a former shoe manufacturer who had been the leading figure at Thomson-Houston. Coffin remained president of General Electric until 1913, and was chairman thereafter until 1922. Meanwhile, also in 1892, GE’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1884 Frank Julian Sprague, an engineer who had worked on electric systems with Edison, resigned and formed the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company, which built the first large-scale electric streetcar system in the United States, in Richmond, Virginia. In 1889 Sprague’s company was purchased by Edison’s. In the meantime, the two other major electric-railway companies in the United States had merged with Thoms on-Houston, so that by the time General Electric was formed, it was the major supplier of electrified railway systems in the United States. One year after the formation of General Electric, the company won a bid for the construction of large AC motors in a textile mill in South Carolina. The motors were the largest manufactured by General Electric at the time and were so successful that orders soon beganto flow in from other industries such as cement, paper, and steel. In that same year, General Electric began its first venture into the field of power transmission with the opening of the Redlands-Mill Creek power line in California, and in 1894 the company constructed a massive power-transmission line at Niagara Falls. Meanwhile the company’s electric-railroad ventures produced an elevated electric train surrounding the fairgrounds of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Electrification of existing rail lines began two years later. By the turn of the century General Electric was manufacturing everything involved in the electrification of the United States: generators to produce electricity, transmission equipment to carry power, industrial electric motors, electric light bulbs, and electric locomotives. It is important to any understanding of the evolution of GE to realize that though it was diverse from the beginning, all of its enterprises centered on the electrification program. It is also worth noting that it operated in the virtual absence of competition. General Electric and the Westinghouse Electric Company had been competitors, but the companies entered into a patent pool in 1896. In 1900 GE established the first industrial laboratory in the United States. Up to that point, research had been carried out in universities or in private laboratories similar to Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory. Initially, the lab was set up in a barn behind the house of one of the researchers, but the lab was moved in 1 900 to Schenectady, New York, after it was destroyed in a fire. The head of the research division was a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The importance of research at General Electric cannot be underestimated, for GE has been awarded more patents over the years than any other company in the United States. During the early decades of the 20th century General Electric made further progress in its established fields and also made its first major diversification. In 1903 General Electric bought the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of transformers. Its founder, William Stanley, was the developer of the transformer. By this time GE’s first light bulbs were in obvious need of improvement. Edison’s bamboo filament was replaced in 1904 by metalized carbon developed by the company’s research lab. That filament, in turn, was replaced several years later by a tungsten-filament light bulb when Willia m Coolidge, a GE researcher, discovered a process to render the durable metal more pliable. This light bulb was so rugged and well suited for use in automobiles, railroad cars, and street cars that it was still employed in the early 2000s. In 1913, two other innovations came out of the GE labs: Irving Langmuir discovered that gas-filled bulbs were more efficient and reduced bulb blackening. To this day virtually all bulbs over 40 watts are gas-filled. The first high-vacuum, hot-cathode X-ray tube, known as the Coolidge tube, was also developed in 1913. Coolidge’s research into tungsten had played an important role in the development of the X-ray tube. The device, which combined a vacuum with a heated tungsten filament and tungsten target, has been the foundation of virtually all X-ray tubes produced ever since, and its development laid the foundation for medical technology operations at General Electric. Perhaps GE’s most important development in the early part of this century was its participation in the development of the high-speed steam turbine in conjunction with English, Swedish, and other inventors. Until this invention, all electricity (except hydroelectric) had been produced by generators that turned at no more than 100 rpm, which limited the amount of electricity a single unit could produce. An independent inventor had come up with a design for a very-high-speed steam turbine before the turn of the century, but it took five years of research before GE could construct a working model. By 1901, however, a 500-kilowatt, 1,200-rpm turbine generator was operating. Orders for the turbines followed almost immediately, and by 1903 a 5,000-kilowatt turbine was in use at Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison power company. Such rapid progress led to rapid obsolescence as well, and the Chicago units were replaced within six years. As a result, GE shops in Schenectady were soon overflowing with business. By 1910 the volume of the company’s trade in turbine generators had tripled and GE had sold almost one million kilowatts of power capacity. At the same time, General Electric scientists were also researching the gas turbine. Their investigations eventually resulted in the first flight of an airplane equipped with a turbine-powered supercharger. In the early days of electric power, electricity was produced only during evening hours, because electric lighting was not needed during the day and there were no other products to use electricity. GE, as the producer of both electricity-generating equipment and electricity-consuming devices, naturally sought to expand both ends of its markets. The first major expansion of the General Electric product line was made in the first decade of the 20th century. Before the turn of the century, light bulbs and electric fans were GE’s only consumer product. One of the first household appliances GE began to market was a toaster in 1905. The following year the company attempted to market an electric range. The unwieldy device consisted of a wooden table top equipped with electric griddles, pans, toasters, waffle irons, pots, and a coffeemaker, each with its own retractable cord to go into any one of 30 plugs. The range was followed by a commercial electric refrigerator in 1911 and by an experimental household refrigerator six years later. At the same time two other companies in the United States were producing electric devices for the home. The Pacific Electric Heating Company produced the first electric appliance to be readily accepted by the public: the Hotpoint iron. The Hughes Electric Heating Company produced and marketed an electric range. In 1918 all three companies were prospering, but to avoid competition with one another, they agreed upon a merger. The new company combined GE’s heating-device section with Hughes and Pacif ic to form the Edison Electric Appliance Company, whose products bore either the GE or the Hotpoint label. GE’s first diversification outside electricity came with its establishment of a research staff to investigate plastics. This occurred primarily at the prompting of Charles P. Steinmetz, a brilliant mathematician who had been with the company since the 1890s. All of the initial work by this group was devoted to coatings, varnishes, insulation, and other products related to electrical wiring, so that even this diversification was tied in to electrification. A more radical branching of GE’s activities occurred in 1912, when Ernst Alexanderson, a GE employee, was approached by a radio pioneer looking for a way to expand the range of wireless sets into higher frequencies. Alexanderson worked for almost a decade on the project before he succeeded in creating electromagnetic waves that could span continents, instead of the short distances to which radios had been limited . In 1922, General Electric introduced its own radio station, WGY, in Schenectady. In 1919, at the request of the government, GE formed, in partnership with AT&T and Westinghouse, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to develop radio technology. GE withdrew from the venture in 1930, when antitrust considerations came to the fore. General Electric also operated two experimental shortwave stations that had a global range. Other developments at General Electric contributed to the progress of the radio. Irving Langmuir had developed the electron tube. This tube, necessary for amplifying the signals in Alexanderson’s radio unit, was capable of operating at very high power. Other important developments by scientists at General Electric included the world’s first practical loudspeaker and a method for recording complex sound on film that is still in use today. Developments continued apace at GE in the electric motor field. In 1913 the U.S. Navy commissioned General Electric to build the first ship to be powered by turbine motors rather than steam. In 1915 the first turbine-propelled battleship sailed forth, and within a few years, all of the Navy’s large ships were equipped with electric power. General Electric also owned several utility companies that generated electrical power, but in 1924 GE left the utilities business when the federal government brought antitrust action against the company. During the Great Depression the company introduced a variety of consumer items such as mixers, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, and washing machines. GE also introduced the first affordable electric refrigerator in the late 1920s. It was designed by a Danish toolmaker, Christian Steenstrup, who later supervised mechanical research at the GE plant in Schenectady. In addition, GE introduced its first electric dishwasher in 1932, the same year that consumer financing of personal appliances was introduced. Also in 1932 the first Nobel Prize ever awarded to a scientist not affiliated with a university went to Irving Langmuir for his work at GE on surface chemistry, research that had grown out of his earlier work on electron tubes. The years that followed witnessed a steady stream of inn ovation in electronics from the GE labs. These included the photoelectric-relay principle, rectifier tubes that eliminated batteries from home receivers, the cathode-ray tube, and glass-to-metal seals for vacuum tubes. Many of these developments in electronics were crucial to the growth of radio broadcasting. The broadcasting division of General Electric achieved a breakthrough in the late 1930s. The company had been developing a mode of transmission known as frequency modulation (FM) as an alternative to the prevailing amplitude modulation (AM). In 1939 a demonstration conducted for the Federal Communications Commission proved that FM had less static and noise. GE began broadcasting in FM the following year. Of course, the light bulb was not forgotten in this broadening of research activity at General Electric. The world’s first mercury-vapor lamp was introduced in 1934, followed four years later by the fluorescent lamp. The latter produced light using half the power of incandescent bulbs, with about twice the lifespan. Less than a year after the introduction of the fluorescent light, General Electric introduced the sealed-beam automotive headlight. Even though production of convenience items for the consumer halted during World War II, the war proved profitable for General Electric, whose revenues quadrupled during the war. The president of General Electric at the time, Charles Wilson, joined the War Production Board in 1942. GE produced more than 50 different types of radar for the armed forces and over 1,500 marine power plants for the Navy and merchant marine. The company, using technology developed by the Englishman Frank Whittle, also conducted research on jet engines for aircraft. The Bell XP-59, the first U.S. jet aircraft, flew in 1942 powered by General Electric engines. By the end of the war this technology helped General Electric develop the nation’s first turboprop engine. When production of consumer goods resumed immediately after the war, GE promptly found itself in another antitrust battle. The government discovered that GE controlled 85 percent of the light bulb industry–55 percent through its own output and the other 30 percent through licensees. In 1949 the court forced GE to release its patents to other companies. In this period the first true product diversifications ca me out of GE’s research labs. In the 1940s a GE scientist discovered a way to produce large quantities of silicone, a material GE had been investigating for a long time. In 1947 GE opened a plant to produce silicones, which allowed the introduction of many products using silicone as a sealant or lubricant. Meanwhile, as research innovation blossomed and postwar business boomed, the company began an employee relations policy known as â€Å"Boulwarism,† from Lemuel Boulware, the manager who established the policy. The policy, which eliminated much of the bargaining involved in labor-management relations, included the extension by GE to union leaders of a nonnegotiable contract offer. During the late 1940s General Electric embarked on a study of nuclear power and constructed a laboratory specifically for the task. Company scientists involved in an earlier attempt to separate U-235 from natural uranium were developing nuclear power plants for naval propulsion by 1946. In 1 955 the Navy launched the submarineSeawolf, the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel, with a reactor developed by General Electric. In 1957 the company received a license from the Atomic Energy Commission to operate a nuclear-power reactor, the first license granted in the United States for a privately owned generating station. That same year GE’s consumer appliance operations got a big boost when an enormous manufacturing site, Appliance Park, in Louisville, Kentucky, was completed. The flow of new GE products–hair dryers, skillets, electronic ovens, self-cleaning ovens, electric knives–continued. Other innovations to come from GE labs during the 1950s included an automatic pilot for jet aircraft, Lexan polycarbonate resin, the first all-transistor radio, jet turbine engines, gas turbines for electrical power generation, and a technique for fabricating diamonds. Antitrust problems continued to vex the company throughout the postwar years. In 1961 the Justice Department indicted 29 companies, of which GE was the biggest, for price fixing on electrical equipment. All the defendants pleaded gui lty. GE’s fine was almost half a million dollars, damages it paid to utilities who had purchased price-fixed equipment came to at least $50 million, and three GE managers received jail sentences and several others were forced to leave the company. During the 1960s and 1970s GE grew in all fields. In 1961 it opened a research center for aerospace projects, and by the end of the decade had more than 6,000 employees involved in 37 projects related to the moon landing. In the 1950s General Electric entered the computer business. This venture, however, proved to be such a drain on the company’s profits that GE sold its computer business to Honeywell in 1971. By the late 1960s, GE’s management began to feel that the company had become too large for its existing structures to accommodate. Accordingly, the company instituted a massive organizational restructuring. Under this restructuring program, the number of distinct operating units within the company was cut from more than 200 to 43. Each new section operated in a particular market and was headed by a manager who reported to management just beneath the corporate policy board. The sections were classified into one of three categories–growth, stability, or no-growth–to facilitate divestment of unprofitab le units. When this reorganization was complete, General Electric made what was at the time the largest corporate purchase ever. In December 1976 GE paid $2.2 billion for Utah International, a major coal, copper, uranium, and ironminer and a producer of natural gas and oil. The company did 80 percent of its business in foreign countries. Within a year Utah International was contributing 18 percent of GE’s total earnings. In the meantime, GE scientist Ivar Giaever was a corecipient of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries in the area of superconductive tunneling. Giaever became the second GE employee to be honored with a Nobel Prize. The divestiture of its computer business had left GE without any capacity for manufacturing integrated circuits and the high-technology products in which they are used. In 1975 a study of the company’s status concluded that GE, one of the first U.S. electrical companies, had fallen far behind in electronics. As a result, GE sp ent some $385 million to acquire Intersil, a semiconductor manufacturer; Calma, a producer of computer graphics equipment; and four software producers. The company also spent more than $100 million to expand its microelectronics facilities. Other fields in which GE excelled were in trouble by the mid-1970s, most notably nuclear power. As plant construction costs skyrocketed and environmental concerns grew, the company’s nuclear power division began to lose money. GE’s management, however, was convinced that the problem was temporary and that sales would pick up in the future. When by 1980 General Electric had received no new orders for plants in five years, nuclear power began to look more and more like a prime candidate for divestment. GE eventually pulled out of all aspects of the nuclear power business except for providing service and fuel to existing plants and conducting research on nuclear energy. Though General Electric’s growth was tremendous during the 1970s and earnings tripled between 1971 and 1981, the company’s stock performance was mediocre. GE had become so large and was involved in so many activities that some regarded its fortunes as capable only of following the fortunes of the country as a whole. GE’s economic problems were mirrored by its managerial reshuffling. When John F. (Jack) Welch, Jr., became chairman and CEO in 1981, General Electric entered a period of radical change. Over the next several years, GE bought 338 businesses and product lines for $11.1 billion and sold 232 for $5.9 billion. But Welch’s first order of business was to return much of the control of the company to the periphery. Although he decentralized management, he retained predecessor Reginald Jones’s system of classifying divisions according to their performance. His goal was to make GE number oneor two in every field of operation. One branch of GEâ€⠄¢s operations that came into its own during this period was the General Electric Credit Corporation, founded in 1943. Between 1979 and 1984, its assets doubled, to $16 billion, primarily because of expansion into such markets as the leasing and selling of heavy industrial goods, inventories, real estate, and insurance. In addition, the leasing operations provided the parent company with tax shelters from accelerated depreciation on equipment developed by GE and then leased by the credit corporation. Factory automation became a major activity at GE during the early 1980s. GE’s acquisitions of Calma and Intersil were essential to this program. In addition, GE entered into an agreement with Japan’s Hitachi, Ltd. to manufacture and market Hitachi’s industrial robots in the United States. GE itself spent $300 million to robotize its locomotive plant in Erie, Pennsylvania. Two years later GE’s aircraft engine business also participated in an air force plant-mo dernization program and GE later manufactured the engines for the controversial B-1B bomber. In 1986 General Electric made several extremely important purchases. The largest–in fact, the largest for the company to that date–was the $6.4 billion purchase of the Radio Corporation of American (RCA), the company GE had helped to found in 1919. RCA’s National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the leading U.S. television network, brought GE into the broadcasting business in full force. Although both RCA and GE were heavily involved in consumer electronics, the match was regarded by industry analysts as beneficial, because GE had been shifting from manufacturing into service and high technology. After the merger, almost 80 percent of GE’s earnings came from services and high technology, compared to 50 percent six years earlier. GE divested itself of RCA’s famous David Sarnoff Research Center, because GE’s labs made it redundant. In 1987 GE also sold its own and RCA’s television manufacturing businesses to the French company Thomson in exchange for Thomson’s medical diagnostics business. GE justified the merger by citing the need for size to compete effectively with large Japanese conglomerates. Critics, however, claimed that GE was running from foreign competition by increasing its defense contracts (to almost 20 percent of its total business) and its service business, both of which were insulated from foreign competition. In 1986 GE also purchased the Employers Reinsurance Corporation, a financial services company, from Texaco, for $1.1 billion,and an 80 percent interest in Kidder Peabody and Company, an investment banking firm, for $600 million, greatly broadening its financial services division. Although Employer’s Reinsurance contributed steadily to GE’s bottom line following its purchase, Kidder Peabody lost $48 million in 1987, in part because of the settlement of insider trading charges. Kidder Peabody did come back in 1988 to contribute $46 million in earnings, but the acquisition still troubled some analysts. GE owned 100 percent of Kidder Peabody by 1990. General Electric’s operations were divided into three business groups in the early 1990s: technology, service, and manufacturing. Its manufacturing operations, traditionally the core of the company, accounted for roughly one-third of the company’s earnings. Still, GE continued to pour more than $1 billion annually into research and development of manufactured goods. Much of that investment was directed at energy conservation–more efficient light bulbs, jet engines, and electrical power transmission methods, for example. In 1992 GE signaled its intent to step up overseas activity with the purchase of 50 percent of the European appliance business of Britainâ€℠¢s General Electric Company (GEC). The two companies also made agreements related to their medical, power systems, and electrical distribution businesses. Welch said that his aim was to make GE the nation’s largest company. To that end, General Electric continued to restructure its existing operations in an effort to become more competitive in all of its businesses. Most importantly, the company launched an aggressive campaign to become dominant in the growing financial services sector. GE’s aggressive initiatives related to financial services reflected the fact that the service sector represented more than three-quarters of the U.S. economy going into the mid-1990s. Furthermore, several service industries, including financial, were growing rapidly. GE’s revenues from its giant NBC and GE Capital divisions, for example, rose more than 12 percent annually from about $14.3 billion in 1988 to more than $25 billion in 1994. Encouraged by those gains, GE’s mer ger and acquisition activity intensified. For example, in 1994 the company offered a $2.2 billion bid for Kemper Corp., a diversified insurance and financial services company (it retracted the bid in 1995). GE’s sales from services as a percentage of total revenues increased from 30 percent in 1988 to nearly 45 percent in 1994, and neared 60 percent by 1996. The troubled Kidder Peabody unitremained a drag on GE’s services operations, leading to the company’s late 1994 decision to liquidate the unit. As part of the liquidation, GE sold some Kidder Peabody assets and operations to Paine Webber Group Inc. for $657 million. In contrast to its service businesses, GE’s total manufacturing receipts remained stagnant at about $35 billion. Nevertheless, restructuring was paying off in the form of fat profit margins in many of its major product divisions. Importantly, GE made significant strides with its Aircraft Engine Group. Sales fell from $8 billion in 1991 to less than $6 billion in 1995, but profit margins rose past 18 percent after dipping to just 12 percent in 1993. Reflective of restructuring efforts in other GE divisions, the company accomplished the profit growth by slashing the engineering workforce from 10,000 to 4,000 and reducing its overall Aircraft Engine Group payroll by about 50 percent, among other cost-cut ting moves. Despite a global economic downturn in the early 1990s, GE managed to keep aggregate sales from its technology, service, and manufacturing operations stable at about $60 billion annually. More importantly, net income surged steadily from $3.9 billion in 1989 to $5.9 billion in 1994, excluding losses in the latter year from Kidder Peabody operations. In 1994, in fact, General Electric was the most profitable of the largest 900 U.S. corporations, and was trailed by General Motors, Ford, and Exxon. Revenues reached $70 billion by 1995, the same year that the company’s market value exceeded $100 billion for the first time. The late 1990s saw General Electric reach a number of milestones. In 1996 the company celebrated its 100th year as part of the Dow Jones Index; GE was the only company remaining from the original list. That year, NBC joined with Microsoft Corporation in launching MSNBC, a 24-hour cable television news channel and Internet news service. Overall revenues exceeded the $100 billion mark for the first time in 1998, while the continuing stellar growth at GE Capital led that unit to generate nearly half of GE’s revenues by the end of the decade. Acquisitions in the late 1990s centered on two of the company’s growth initiatives: services and globalization. In 1996 the GE Appliances division acquired a 73 percent interest in DAKO S.A., the leading manufacturer of gas ranges in Brazil. GE Capital Services expanded in Japan through the 1996 purchase of an 80 percent stake in Marubeni Car System Co., an auto leasing firm; the 1998 acquisitions of Koei Credit and the consumer finance business of Lake Corporation; and the 1998 formation of GE Edison Life following the purchase of the sales operations of Toho Mutual Life Insurance, which made GE Capital the first foreign company involved in the Japanese life insurance market. In early 1999 GE Capital made its largest deal in Japan to date with the purchase of the leasing business of Japan Leasing Corporation, a business with $7 billion in leasing assets. Then in late 1999 GE Capital agreed to purchase the remaining assets of Toho Mutual for  ¥240 billion ($2.33 billion); Toho had collapsed during 1999 after suffering huge losses from the thousands of old, unprofitable policies in its portfolio, and a large portion of its liabilities were to be covered by Japan’s life insurance association. Expansion also continued in Europe for GE Capital, highlighted by the 1997 acquisition of Woodchester, one of the largest financial services companies in Ireland. Overall, GE spent some $30 billion during the 1990s in completing more tha n 130 European acquisitions. Under Welch’s leadership, General Electric in the late 1990s also adopted â€Å"six sigma,† a quality control and improvement initiative pioneered by Motorola, Inc. and AlliedSignal Inc. The program aimed to cut costs by reducing errors or defects. GE claimed that by 1998 six sigma was yielding $1 billion in annual savings. The company also continued to restructure as necessary, including taking a $2.3 billion charge in late 1997 to close redundant facilities and shift production to cheaper labor markets. During 1999 General Electric adopted a fourth growth initiative, e-business (globalization, services, and six sigma being the other three). Like many longstanding companies, GE reacted cautiously when the Internet began its late 1990s explosion. But once he was convinced of the new medium’s potential, Welch quickly adopted e-commerce as a key to the company’s future growth. Among the early ventures was a plan to begin selling appliances through Home Depot, Inc.’s web site, a move aimed at revitalizing lagging appliance sales. In late 1999 Welch announced that he planned to retire in April 2001, but he did not name a successor. At the time, General Electric was one of the world’s fastest growing and most profitable companies, and boasted a market capitalization of $505 billion, second only to Microsoft Corporation. Revenues for 1999 increased 11 percent to $111.63 billion while net income rose 15 percent to $10.72 billion. These figures also represented huge gains since Welch took over in 1981, when the company posted profits of $1.6 billion on sales of$27.2 billion. Welch was not done yet, however. In October 2000 he swooped in to break up a planned $40 billion merger of United Technologies Corporation and Honeywell International Inc. The Honeywell board accepted GE’s $45 billion bid, which was set to be the largest acquisition in the company’s history. Honeywell was coveted for its aerospace unit, a $9.9 billion business involved in flight-control systems, onboard environmental controls, and repair services. The addition of this unit was expected to significantly boost the GE Aircraft Engines unit, creating a global aerospace giant. Welch agreed to stay on at General Electric through the end of 2001 in order to see the acquisition through to fruition. He did, however, name a successor soon after this deal was announced. In November 2000 Jeffrey R. Immelt won the succession battle and wa s named president and chairman-elect. Immelt, who joined GE in 1982, had most recently served as president and CEO of GE Medical Systems, a unit with revenues of $12 billion. Immelt’s two chief rivals in the race to become only the ninth CEO in GE’s long history, W. James McNerney Jr., head of GE Aircraft Engines, and Robert L. Nardelli, head of GE Power Systems, soon left the company to become CEOs of 3M Company and Home Depot, respectively. Rather than serving as a capstone for a much admired reign of leadership, the Honeywell deal instead provided a sour ending for the Welch era. In the summer of 2001 the European Commission blocked the deal on antitrust grounds as 11th-hour negotiations between the European regulators and GE executives broke down. Welch finally retired soon thereafter, with Immelt taking over as chairman and CEO in September 2001. Meanwhile, one last major deal was initiated prior to the leadership handover. In July 2001 General Electric’s G E Capital unit agreed to pay $5.3 billion for Heller Financial Inc., a global commercial finance company based in Chicago that had total assets of about $19.5 billion. This deal, the second largest in GE history, behind only the 1986 deal for RCA, was consummated in October 2001. Also during 2001, GE Lighting had the largest product launch in its history when it introduced the GE Reveal line of light bulbs, which were touted as providing â€Å"a cleaner, crisper light† because the bulbs filtered out the duller yellow rays commonly produced by standard incandescent light bulbs. GE began feeling the effects of the economic downturn that year as revenues fell nearly 3 percent, to $125.68 billion; profits nevertheless increased 7.5percent, reaching $13.68 billion, though that was a far cry from the yearly 13 to 15 percent increases that Wall Street came to expect from GE during the Welch era. Immelt began to place his imprint in earnest on GE in 2002 through major restructurings and several significant acquisitions. Midyear he launched a reorganization of GE Capital. The financial services unit was divided into four separate units to streamline management, increase oversight, and improve transparency. The new units were: GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Management (involved in equipment leasing and loans), and GE Insurance. Also during 2002, the GE Appliances and GE Lighting units were combined into a new GE Consumer Products unit. On the acquisitions front, NBC widened its media holdings through the April 2002 acquisition of Hialeah, Florida-based Telemundo Communications Group Inc. for $2.7 billion and the $1.25 billion purchase of the Bravo cable network, completed in December of that year. Telemundo owned the second largest Spanish-language television network, as well as nine U.S. TV stations and the leading TV station in Puerto Rico. NBC hoped to tap into the growing Hispanic market via the deal. Bravo was known for its intelligent, arts-oriented programming such as Inside the Actors Studio, and it provided NBC with its first entertainment-oriented cable property. Also during 2002, GE Specialty Materials acquired BetzDearborn, a leading maker of water treatment chemicals, from Hercules Inc. for $1.8 billion. In addition, GE Industrial Systems spent about $777 million for Interlogix, Inc, an Austin, Texas-based manufacturer of electronic security products and systems for commercial, industrial, and residential use. All told, General Electric spent approximately $9 billion on industrial acquisitions alone during 2002. Concerns about whether the company could continue its stellar earnings performance and about its accounting practices sent GE’s stock sharply lower in 2002. The stock ended the year trading at $24.35 per share, less than half of the high price for 2001. Once again, profits rose modestly, to $14.12 billion, or about 3 percent. Taking advantage of the economic downturn to acquire desirable assets from distressed sellers, GE’s deal-making appetite grew only larger in 2003. That year was the company’s biggest acquisition year yet, with deals worth a collective $30 billion either completed or announced . In August the company agreed to buy Transamerica Finance Corporation’s commercial lending business from AegonN.V. of The Netherlands for $5.4 billion. The deal, which added about $8.5 billion in assets to the GE Commercial Finance unit, closed in January 2004. Also during the summer of 2003 GE sold three of its slower growing insurance businesses: Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., Tokyo-based GE Edison Life Insurance Co., and GE’s U.S.-based auto and homeowners insurance unit. About $4.5 billion was raised through these divestments. As part of its effort to shift emphasis to higher growth fields, General Electric completed two significant acquisitions in healthcare. In October 2003, Instrumentarium Corp. was acquired for $2.3 billion. Based in Finland, Instrumentarium was a major medical-equipment maker with a product line that featured devices for anesthesia, critical care, and patient monitoring. That same month, GE agreed to buy Amersham plc, a British firm specializing in diagnostics agents used during scans of the body for disease, gene-sequencing tools, and protein separation for high-tech drug development. Consummated in April 2004 and valued at about $9.5 billion, the purchase of Amersham stood, very briefly, as the largest acquisition in General Electric history. Following the Amersham acquisition, GE Medical Systems, now a $14 billion business, was renamed GE Healthcare. Based in the United Kingdom–the first GE unit to be headquartered outside the United States–GE Healthcare was headed by Amersham’s former chief executive, William Castell; Castell was also named a GE vice-chairman, the first outsider to be so named. Meanwhile, also in October 2003, General Electric announced an even larger deal, a $14 billion acquisition of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE), the U.S. unit of the French group Vivendi Universal S.A. Among VUE’s assets wer e the Universal Pictures movie studio, the specialty film unit Focus Features, the Universal Television production outfit, cable channels USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel, and theme parks in California, Florida, Japan, and Spain. Upon completion of the deal in May 2004, NBC was merged with VUE to form NBC Universal, which was 80 percent owned by GE and 20 percent by Vivendi. This expansion into entertainment content mimicked earlier combinations involving the ABC and CBS television networks. Continuing his transformative leadership, Immelt reorganized GE’s 13 business units into 11 focused on specific markets and customers. The reorganization, effective at the beginning of 2004, brought similar businesses together in an effort to increase sales and cut costs. The most significant of the changes included combining the firm’s aircraftengines business and its rail-related operations in a new GE Transportation unit; merging most of GE Industrial Systems with GE Consumer Prod ucts to form GE Consumer & Industrial, which focused on lighting products, appliances, and integrated industrial equipment, systems, and services; and forming GE Infrastructure from certain operations of GE Industrial Systems and GE Specialty Materials. Also in January 2004, GE continued disposing of its insurance operations. That month, General Electric launched an initial public offering (IPO) of about one-third of the stock of the newly formed Genworth Financial, Inc., which consisted of the bulk of GE’s life and mortgage insurance businesses. The IPO was planned for completion by mid-2004, after which GE planned to make Genworth fully independent within three years. What was left of GE Insurance was mainly its reinsurance business, which was long rumored to be another candidate for divestment. Overall, through the myriad moves engineered during just a few years in charge, Immelt was seeking to cut General Electric’s reliance on financial services and mature industrial businesses in favor of such higher growth areas as healthcare and entertainment. He was also building operations in fast-growing economies such as China’s. By 2005, GE was aiming to outsource $5 billion of parts and services from China and simultaneously grow sales in China to a like figure. Further divestments were also expected, and there had long been speculation that the slow-growing lighting and appliances businesses were prime candidates. Through initiatives such as these, Immelt hoped to return General Electric to double-digit earnings growth by 2005. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/general-electric-company#ixzz1c6xpDIo9

Assess the View The Modern Family Is Child Centrded Essay

Assess the view that the modern family has become more children centred. Some sociologists argue that the modern family has become more children centred. This is mainly due to the changes in laws restricting child labour and excluding children from paid work. This is because from about the 10th to the 13th century the idea of childhood did not exist. According to Aries in the middle ages childhood as a separate age-stage was short. Children entered wider society on the same terms as adults. Even the laws we have today to protect children were not applicable, the law often made no distinction between children and adults and they faced the same punishment as adults. However Aries theory can be deemed as unreliable as he used evidence from paintings and diaries to understand childhood and family life in the past. Another reason some sociologist argue that the family has become more child centred is due to the introduction of compulsory schooling for all children in 1880. This benefited mostly the poorer children as some upper class children had already been receiving education. According to Aries some elements of the modern notion of childhood gradually began to emerge from the 13th century onwards. This is because school came to specialize in the education of children. However conflict sociologists such as Marxist argue that inequalities among children of different classes still exist even if all children go to school. The opportunities and risks they face still differ as many children remain unprotected and badly cared for. The view that the modern family has become more children centred can be explained with declining family size and lower infant mortality rates.

Higgins Philosophy Essays - Pygmalion, English-language Films

Higgins Philosophy Essays - Pygmalion, English-language Films Higgins' Philosophy Professor Higgins is seen throughout Pygmalion as a very rude man. While one may expect a well educated man, such as Higgins, to be a gentleman, he is far from it. Higgins believes that how you treated someone is not important, as long as you treat everyone equally. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another. -Higgins, Act V Pygmalion. Higgins presents this theory to Eliza, in hope of justifying his treatment of her. This theory would be fine IF Higgins himself lived by it. Henry Higgins, however, lives by a variety of variations of this philosophy. It is easily seen how Higgins follows this theory. He is consistently rude towards Eliza, Mrs. Pearce, and his mother. His manner is the same to each of them, in accordance to his philosophy. However the Higgins we see at the parties and in good times with Pickering is well mannered. This apparent discrepancy between Higgins' actions and his word, may not exist, depending on the interpretation of this theory. There are two possible translations of Higgins' philosophy. It can be viewed as treating everyone the same all of the time or treating everyone equally at a particular time. It is obvious that Higgins does not treat everyone equally all of the time, as witnessed by his actions when he is in "one of his states" (as Mrs. Higgins' parlor maid calls it). The Higgins that we see in Mrs. Higgins' parlor is not the same Higgins we see at the parties. When in "the state" Henry Higgins wanders aimlessly around the parlor, irrationally moving from chair to chair, highly unlike the calm Professor Higgins we see at the ball. Higgins does not believe that a person should have the same manner towards everyone all of the time, but that a person should treat everyone equally at a given time (or in a certain situation). When he is in "one of those states" his manner is the same towards everyone; he is equally rude and disrespectful to all. Yet when minding his manners, as he does at the parties, he can be a gentleman. If the second meaning of Higgins' theory, that he treats everyone equally at a particular time, is taken as his philosophy, there is one major flaw. Higgins never respects Eliza, no matter who is around. In Act V of Pygmalion, Eliza confronts him about his manner towards her. "He (Pickering) treats a flower girl as duchess." Higgins, replying to Eliza, "And I treat a duchess as a flower girl." In an attempt to justify this Higgins replies "The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better." Eliza does not answer this question but the reader knows that Higgins has treated others better than Eliza. At the parties, for example, Higgins is a gentleman to the hosts and other guest, but still treats Eliza as his "experiment." Higgins could never see the "new" Eliza. Higgins only saw the dirty flower girl that had become his "experiment." Much like an author never sees a work as finished, Higgins could not view Eliza lady or duchess. Since Higgins knew where Eliza came from it was difficult for him to make her parts fit together as a masterpiece that he respected. Part of Higgins' problem in recognizing the "new" Eliza is his immaturity. He does not see her as what she is, he only sees her as what she was. This immaturity is representative of Higgins' childish tendencies that the reader can see throughout the play. Higgins' child-like actions can partially explain the variations in his philosophy. Try to imagine Higgins as a young teenager. A young Higgins, or any teenage boy for that matter, has a very limited outlook. They treat everyone the same; depending on the situation they may be little gentlemen or rude dudes. When around parents the teenager is rude and inconsiderate yet when among his friends he a complete gentleman. The adult Higgins' actions are the same as the child.

Like Serves Nouns and Pronouns, Not Verbs

Like Serves Nouns and Pronouns, Not Verbs â€Å"Like† Serves Nouns and Pronouns, Not Verbs â€Å"Like† Serves Nouns and Pronouns, Not Verbs By Daniel Scocco Like is associated with various uncouth usages â€Å"They were, like, all over the place†; â€Å"I was, like, ‘Really?’† common in speech but easily avoided (except for comic effect) in writing, but many people are unaware that another widespread usage is considered improper in formal writing. As a preposition meaning â€Å"similar to,† like is associated with nouns (â€Å"She entered the room like an empress†) and pronouns (â€Å"I don’t know anyone like him†). However, when the word connects one clause (a segment of a sentence that includes a subject and a verb) to another, it impersonates a conjunction: â€Å"He started dancing like his pants were on fire†; â€Å"I arranged the furniture like it had appeared before.† Note, though, that this usage, though ubiquitous in conversation and in informal writing, is not considered acceptable in formal writing; like should be replaced, respectively, by â€Å"as if† (He started dancing as if his pants were on fire†) or as: (â€Å"I arranged the furniture as it had appeared before†). Replacing as with â€Å"the way† is also acceptable: â€Å"I arranged the furniture the way it had appeared before.† (But beware of hypercorrection; as is erroneous when, with the same intent, it precedes a noun: â€Å"She entered the room as an empress† means that the subject literally became, rather than merely resembled, royalty. But â€Å"She entered the room as an empress would† is correct, because the emphasis is then on the subject’s action, not on the type of person the subject is compared to.) In the case of a sentence such as â€Å"Like many first-time visitors do, I stared, dumbstruck, at the vista before me,† either change like to as (â€Å"As many first-time visitors do, I stared, dumbstruck, at the vista before me†) or delete the verb at the end of the introductory phrase (â€Å"Like many first-time visitors, I stared, dumbstruck, at the vista before me†). Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the General category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:100 Idioms About Numbers50 Idioms About Fruits and VegetablesAppropriate vs. Apropos vs. Apt

Acts of Faith Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Acts of Faith - Essay Example In this book, the author talks about various identity related issues that young Muslim immigrant generation faces in America. The author tries to find a perfect balance between the life of a Muslim and a fully American person. A person taking birth in America comes usually faces identity crisis because he/she has to cope with the challenge of finding the real identity out of the pool of incomplete identities. In this book, the author has mentioned that in the process of finding his true self, he experienced different aspects of a mixed culture. For example, the author was taking inspirations from people from other religions and had relations with Mormon and Jewish women. Practicing a different religion (Buddhism), having parents from some other religion (Islam), and discovering roots in some other culture (Indian Culture) are the basic elements of this book. This book is mainly for such immigrants who are in despair or feel alienated about their future. In a world full of fundamentalist aggression and noticeable religious division, this book provides a way and hope for people to find their real self, as well as a direction towards their future. I think this book is a good source of hope for people taking birth and growing up in America as Muslim immigrants. In general, such people face difficulty in finding their origin in terms of culture and region because they live in a Western culture that does not hold the same cultural or religious values as of their real cultures and religions. In some cases, they face identity crisis in their whole lives. This book provides them with some hope to find their identities while living in a different society. One of the main challenges for a second generation Muslim immigrant is to find the roots of his/her own religion and culture after facing a series of rejections all through his/her adolescence and early adulthood. This book can help such