The electical industry of Britain before world War I was relatively backward, stagnant and immature, in comparison with that of the United States or Germany. We can point out these features of the British electrical industry in several aspects : (1) the inactive trust movements, (2) the small sizes of business and the small scale of the industry as a whole, (3) the weakness in the international competition, (4) the industrial domination by foreign subsidiary enterprises and (5) the technological retardation.
In these industrial circumstances, the General Electric Co. (GEC) had grown very rapidly to be one of the leading electrical manufactures by World War I, The direct ancestor of the company was the General Electric Apparatus Co. (GEA) which had been manly engages in selling electical goods. The basic strategy of GEC was the “generalization” that had been settles in the age of GEA. After is was organized and began to produce electical goods in 1889, GEC kept on developing rapidly and sometimes steadily by adopting a policy of “diversification” which formed a part of the “generalization”.
From the viewpoint of the policy of “diversification”, the process of the development of GEC might be divided into two stages : (A) 1889-1900 and (B) 1900-1913. At the former stage, GEC produced many kinds of electrical goods which were, however, limited to those with less sophisticated technology. Among them, one of the key products was the incandescent electric lamp. At the later stage, GEC began to produce not only heavy electrical machinery but also other new electrical goods, responding to the changing structure of the market. Thus GEC developed to be a “general” electrical manufacturer by the outbreak of World War I.

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