Image Worlds ― Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890-1930

By viewing the corporation as a communicator, Image Worlds links the histories oflabor, business, consumption, engineering, and photography, providing a new perspective on one ofthe largest and most representative corporations. General Electric was one of the first modernindustrial corporations to use photographs and other media resources to create images of itself; andthe GE archives, comprising well over a million images, form one of the largest privately heldcollections in the world. To produce this venturesome book, David Nye has used these vast archivesto develop a new approach to corporate ideology through corporate iconography.Image Worlds embracessymbols, intentional signs, and photographs on the one hand and the history of institutional andtechnological development on the other. It views photography as a developing technology with ahistory of its own, and presents the corporation as a communicator as well as a producer andemployer.Illustrated with nearly 60 photographs from the archives, the book identifies five "imagemarkets" that GE sought to organize and address. Company engineers, workers, and managers receivedpublications designed to appeal to their presumed interests. Some of these grew into public journalswith a scientific-educational mission; others were restricted in circulation even within thecompany. At the same time, illustrated mass-media advertising was created to reach potentialconsumers of GE products. Advertising that presented an image of GE as a place where "progress wasthe most important product." While GE was promoting this enlightened image, the company was alsousing its resources to reach the voting public, hoping to gain their support for privateelectrification in the national debate over municipal power.David E. Nye is Associate Professor ofAmerican History at Odense University in Denmark.