With these words, William Stanley abandoned the career pattern that his father had laid out for him - college, law school, and membership in the family law firm - and set out instead on the more risky and exciting path of electrical invention. The decision marked the beginning of a productive career whose highlights included the invention of the modern type of transformer, and the creation of the business enterprise that was to become General Electric's Pittsfield Works.

Stanley gave early evidence of his ability and enthusiasm. As his first employer, inventor Hiram S. Maxim described him:

 
      Mr.Stanley was very young. He was also very tall and thin, but what he 
      lacked in bulk, he made up for in activity. He was boiling over with
      enthusiasm. Nothing went fast enough for him.

This dynamism helped him gain an outstanding reputation in the early electrical industry. In 1885, ill health almost cut short his career. But it proved a disguised blessing, because it necessitated a move to his family home, Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In those peaceful surroundings, he was able to develop some ideas he had suggested two years earlier to his employer, George Westinghouse (who helped finance Stanley's lab) for a new type of transformer.

This work resulted, on March 20, 1886, in the demonstration of a prototype system of high voltage transmission employing Stanley's parallel connected transformer. It proved the feasibility of concepts that are now employed in transmission systems throughout the world.

In 1890, he incorporated the Stanley Manufacturing Company to build and install high voltage transmission systems. To organize it, he joined forces with two talented associates: John J. Kelley, an outstanding designer of motors: and a former Stanley laboratory worker, Cummings C. Chesney .

Chesney, a native of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, had graduated from Penn State, and had begun his career as a teacher of mathematics and chemistry. Attracted by the prospects of electricity, he came to work for Stanley. He went on to spend two years with the U.S. Electric Lighting Co. in Newark, New Jersey., before becoming one of the incorporators of Stanley's new enterprise. His skill in engineering and manufacturing complemented the inventive talents of Kelley, and the overall inspiration and creativity provided by Stanley.

The product of their efforts, the "SKC" system, won several early transmission contracts. When the developers of the Blue Falls project in California proposed a 200-mile, 60,000 volt transmission line, they were told by no less an authority than Charles Proteus Steinmetz that the idea was impractical. But the SKC team took on the job - and successfully completed it.

General electric came to realize that it was better to join than fight this dynamic enterprise. In 1903, Stanley's company merged with GE; in 1906, its facilities were renamed the GE Pittsfield Works. Cummings C. Chesney became the first works manager, and went on to do major work in the areas of AC motors, lightning arrestors, and transformers, leading to his being awarded the Edison Medal in 1921. the effort which Stanley began, and Chesney helped consolidate, forms a basis for GE's present position in the field of power transmission.

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