Hi and welcome to our Show and Tell. We are showing off some of our fun items that we collected throughout the years. If you see something of interest and are in the USA please contact us. Then we can possibly list and reserve the item you’re interested in at our Etsy store for purchase. For pickup only items we can list and reserve the item at our Ebay store. We are not selling items through this website, it is for Show and Tell purposes only. Thank You!
Vintage Industrial (GE) General Electric Sign, Looks cast brass or bronze and nonmagnetic. Surprisingly bold lettering on the antique sign. Unusual to find large GE square plaque and not rounded. No mounting holes, do see little old adhesive on back. Fun info at bottom on this cool company from the great Wikipedia.
Plaque measures 8 1/4″ wide, 8 1/8″ tall and close to 1/4″ thick. Nice weight for size at 3 pound 10 oz. Antique plate has its scratches, scuffs, dings, scrapes, tarnishing, verdigris, nice Patina and still looks great!! The logo is deeply etched into metal. Patina on front showing good age, Far from perfect and still looks great! Numbered CT 41384. Has a reddish burgundy copperish wash on front that mostly worn off.
Guessing made early 1920s to mid 1950s. Cool Old Vintage Metal GE Plaque Sign Tag. Please check pictures for description and condition.
During 1889, Thomas Edison had business interests in many electricity-related companies, including Edison Lamp Company, a lamp manufacturer in East Newark, New Jersey; Edison Machine Works, a manufacturer of dynamos and large electric motors in Schenectady, New York; Bergmann & Company, a manufacturer of electric lighting fixtures, sockets, and other electric lighting devices; and Edison Electric Light Company, the patent-holding company and the financial arm backed by J. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family for Edison’s lighting experiments.
In 1889, Drexel, Morgan & Co., a company founded by J.P. Morgan and Anthony J. Drexel, financed Edison’s research and helped merge those companies under one corporation to form Edison General Electric Company, which was incorporated in New York on April 24, 1889. The new company also acquired Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company in the same year. The consolidation did not involve all of the companies established by Edison; notably, the Edison Illuminating Company, which would later become Consolidated Edison, was not part of the merger.
In 1880, Gerald Waldo Hart formed the American Electric Company of New Britain, Connecticut, which merged a few years later with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, led by Charles Coffin. In 1887, Hart left to become superintendent of the Edison Electric Company of Kansas City, Missouri. General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co. Both plants continue to operate under the GE banner to this day. The company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant used as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric’s Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed.
In 1893, General Electric bought the business of Rudolf Eickemeyer in Yonkers, New York, along with all of its patents and designs. One of the employees was Charles Proteus Steinmetz. Only recently arrived in the United States, Steinmetz was already publishing in the field of magnetic hysteresis and had earned worldwide professional recognition. Led by Steinmetz, Eickemeyer’s firm had developed transformers for use in the transmission of electrical power among many other mechanical and electrical devices. Steinmetz quickly became known as the engineering wizard in GE’s engineering community.
