CLEVELAND--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 8, 2003--Nela Park - home to GE Consumer Products' lighting business in East Cleveland and the world's first industrial park - is celebrating its 90th anniversary this month.
The more than 600 employees who work at the campus are honoring nine decades of innovation and imagination at work, GE's new slogan, with a series of activities, including an employee open house at the park's world-famous GE Lighting Institute.
Featured are historical displays, as well as 21st Century lighting technology, that tout the business' past, present and future.
Demonstrating continued commitment to the Cleveland-area community and tied to the innovation and imagination themes, GE Consumer Products President and CEO Jim Campbell and the lighting business' Chief Operating Officer Jack Fish will present a $25,000 GE Fund check to the National Inventors Hall of Fame's Camp Invention to benefit Superior Elementary School students in East Cleveland.
Taking a step back in history ... it all started in April of 1913, when 400 employees of the National Quality Lamp Division of the General Electric Company, located on 45th St. in Cleveland, Ohio, packed equipment and other business materials for a move by horse-drawn vans and motorcade to Nela Park, considered to be one of the world's most unique industrial parks ever conceived and created.
More than 200 vans were used to make the massive move that was completed in 19 hours. Employees missed only three hours of work! Transported were 18,000 crates and tons of company records and miscellaneous equipment.
Over the decades, many of the world's most significant lighting inventions and innovative research and development have taken place within the historic buildings of Nela Park.
That ingenuity continues today, in the tradition of the Edison spirit, through a variety of creative projects, led by talented employees of GE Consumer Products - Lighting. Many of the country's - and world's - most important monuments, landmarks, and sports complexes are lighted by innovative GE lighting products.
GE Consumer Products is an $8.5 billion business unit, providing products and services in the major appliance and lighting industries, manufacturing and selling more than 15 million appliances and four billion lamp products annually in over 150 world markets. General Electric (NYSE: GE) brings imagination to work, selling products under the Monogram(R), Profile(tm), GE(R), Hotpoint(R), SmartWater(tm), Reveal(R) and GE SmartHome(tm) brands.
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CONTACT: GE Consumer Products
Janice Fraser, 216/266-2185