A Collection of Meatballs

by Dan Wiswell

I was moving through some of the equipment in my archive recently when I concluded that I may have to create a separate wing dedicated exclusively to General Electric. I don’t know how it happened, but now, there is just too much equipment to present here in one article. On several occasions, I found some of the specimens in small collections of equipment when local companies went out of business. Sometimes, just by a twist of fate, I happened to be in the right place and the universe appears to have provided. So, let’s get into it.

As a young metrologist in the 1970s, I used to repair industrial test instruments at the Mancib Company, Inc., located in Burlington, Massachusetts. Back then, there was a fair mix of old-fashioned analog, and the more modern digital test equipment of that time, coming through our repair department. It was a busy lab with eight metrologists and an assortment of other individuals working in sales and our value-added department. Hundreds of pieces of equipment flowed through the lab each week. A fair portion of it was made by General Electric.

Early Meatballs

Many people know that Thomas Edison was one of the founders of General Electric. It is an interesting study to read about his innovations and of his association with other visionaries of his time. He had the ability to attract the interest of powerful men, the likes of which J. P. Morgan was one. Mr. Morgan was on General Electric’s board of directors and was also a founding father of the company.

By themselves, these gentlemen were major contributors to the advancement of technology in the evolving world of those times. By combining their energies, they helped elevate society to a technological level only imagined just a few decades before.

Timing seems to also have played a hand. The company’s first government contract was to design and construct the electrical control system for the locks and safety features of the Panama Canal. It was the largest fully electric supervisory and control system of its kind in the world. Control rooms that monitored ship traffic in the canal were equipped with complete, working, miniature models of the canal that replicated all the working features of each portion of the canal that they served. The entire system stood as a testament to the prowess and ingenuity of the GE technical team.

Soon after commissioning the Panama Canal site, orders for General Electric products began streaming in from around the globe. As the company grew, it became easier to list products that were not made by GE than to encompass their entire product offering. From heavy industrial electrical equipment and locomotives to a myriad of household appliances, all products sported the stylized GE logo, affectionately known as the GE meatball. My first recollection of seeing this logo was on my grandparents’ refrigerator that they purchased in the 1940s.

Schenectady Ammeters

I felt as if my horizons were broadened when I began seeing the variety of electrical instruments the company also made. Most of GE’s electrical instruments were made at its large factory located in Schenectady, NY. Many tens of thousands of an extensive range of electrical instruments were made there during the wooden box era of test equipment design in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Most of the Schenectady plant’s production of early instruments was focused on portable instruments that measured the electrical power parameters of voltage, current, power and power factor. The Type P3 and P4 series of instruments were some of the most popular GE products that passed through the Mancib Company’s lab when I worked there. Pictured here are some examples of Type P3 and P4 ammeters that I have retained over the years. However, the first example pre-dates the P series designation. It was calibrated in 1910 at the factory in Schenectady and still measures current within its original tolerance (Picture 1, above).

Another example of a Type P3 Ammeter is shown below. This unit was calibrated at the GE plant located in Lynn, Massachusetts on May 20, 1911. To the right of this unit is a Type P3 ammeter that was repaired by the Alvin S. Mancib Company on October 15, 1948. A record of this repair is inscribed on the meter scale of the instrument, as can be seen in the picture’s detail. In those days, the Mancib Company was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was a full-service distributor of GE measuring instruments.

The General Electric facility located in Lynn, Massachusetts has been a large employer of the local population for over 130 years. Some of my employees that worked as metrologists at Cal-Tek Company also worked previously at the GE Lynn plant. Now a part of GE Aerospace, this facility is where the first American jet engine was made during World War II. It had an extensive laboratory where many GE instruments were standardized or recalibrated over the years. The Type P4 ammeter below was calibrated there on August 14, 1911. Adjacent to the P4 ammeter is a Type P3 voltmeter calibrated at the same facility nearly thirty years later. Both were owned by the Boston Edison Company.

Watt Meters

Moving on to watts, to the right are some examples of Type P3 watt meters. I found some of these at motor repair shops. Judging by the volume of the surviving examples of these instruments, they appear to have been very popular in their day.

A Few More of Note

Lastly in this series, I have included some examples of power factor measuring instruments. It is obvious that the front panel layout of the Type P3 and P4 series of instruments lent itself well to a broad range of products.

These instruments were not the only types of instruments manufactured at the General Electric plant in Schenectady, NY. Chart recorders and many other instruments were made there as well. Clamp-on current meters and portable watt meters like those shown (Pictures 11 and 12) also came out of the Schenectady plant.

To me, some of the most beautiful instruments that were produced in the early twentieth century by General Electric were the PL2 Series of laboratory standards. Pictures 13, 14, and 15 were the primary standards of the Alvin S. Mancib Company. These were their laboratory standards for AC current, voltage, and watts. They were located in the inner sanctum of the laboratory.

Only a few metrologists in the company were allowed access to them. I feel privileged to have them in my archive. They were in use for over fifty years and were replaced in the late 1970s by calibrators made by the Rotek Company located at the time at 220 Grove Street in Waltham, Massachusetts.

As I was taking pictures of these products it was interesting for me to see the various calibration stickers from local laboratories that have calibrated these devices over the years. It brought a smile to my face to see the names of metrologists in the support documents that add to the provenance of each instrument. I revered these gentlemen as a young man.

Looking back, it could have been possible for five generations of my family to have worked in the test and measurement field in the Boston area. Were he so inclined, my great grandfather could have used some of the instruments that I still pass by each day. That is probably why, to this day, I still feel compelled to keep them all in good working condition.

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About the Author

Dan Wiswell is a self-described Philosopher of Metrology. He is President/CEO of Amblyonix Industrial Instrument Company.