Jesse R. Lovejoy (1863-1945)

A technically trained college graduate entered the electrical industry in the 1880's received a small starting salary - but a big opportunity for career advancement. Jesse R. Lovejoy, the builder of GE's sales organization, joined the Thompson-Houston Company upon his graduation form Ohio State with a degree in physics in 1886. For a starting salary of 10 cents an hour he performed the standard test man's chores: chipping castings, winding armatures, and assembling and testing incandescent lamps at the West Lynn, Massachusetts, plant.

The real reward was a firsthand acquaintance with the leaders of the emerging electrical industry: Elihu Thomson, Edwin W. Rice, Jr., and , most importantly for Lovejoy, the brilliant shoe salesman turned electric company executive, Charles A. Coffin. Called upon by Coffin to report on an early technical project, Lovejoy made such favorable impression that he was admitted into Coffin's inner circle of associates, and was called on to perform a series of important business and personal missions.

At the same time, he was gaining broad experience in the technologies of electrical manufacturing. He helped develop incandescent lighting systems, and became aware of their superiority over arc lamps for indoor illumination. He installed some of the early central stations, and correctly surmised that the future of the electrical business lay in these large-scale generating plants, rather than in home power plants. But his major strengths were in organization and supervision, rather than in engineering. In 1889 he was made Construction Superintendent, and established policies that were later to become embodied in General Electric's famous "Test Program".

When Thompson-Houston merged with Edison General Electric Company in 1892, the Corporation's first president, Charles Coffin, called on his chief lieutenants for an organization meeting. After assigning the business areas - lighting, motors, electric railways and the rest - Coffin turned to Lovejoy and said:

    Whatever is left in our business, after these departments have taken what belongs
         to them, you can have, Lovejoy, and make into the Supply Department.

It may have seemed at first like an unrewarding assignment. But Lovejoy soon found that the odds and ends left over to his department - switches, connectors, and the rest - were in great demand from the customers in the explosively growing electrical business. He proved adept at meeting and anticipating the demand. At the weekly meetings where the staff reported on departmental sales, his department's steadily growing contribution often exceeded that reported by the more technically glamorous branches.

As a result, when the time came in 1907 to select a General Sales Manager of the company, Lovejoy was the natural choice. In this capacity he made his greatest contribution to the growth of General Electric. his drive and optimism were well fitted to the most rapid growth period the industry was to experience. He carefully selected a sales force, trained it to cope with the tremendous problems faced by the application of electricity to new industrial and domestic roles, and helped GE expand into the international arena.

His success at this crucial task was recognized by his being named to the company board of directors in 1922, and to an honorary vice-presidency in 1928. The company's top spot eluded him: Charles A. Coffin decided in 1922 that the company needed an administrator, not a salesman, in the presidency. Lovejoy went on to perform a number of important services both within the Company - serving, for example, as president of the GE Employees Security Corporation, a forerunner of today's pension plan - and in the community. But his main place in GE history is that of the creator of the sales force second to no other in American industry.

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