Thwarted on antitrust grounds from participating in the dawn of the great American radio networks, GE nonetheless found its way into pop culture as a sponsor of live television in TV’s golden age. It hired celebrity pitchmen—in particular, a film actor whose career was on the wane named Ronald Reagan—to entice consumers to buy its home goods and fire up workers with enthusiasm about the world-changing innovations being driven by GE’s work. It’s a truism of modern-day Silicon Valley that every startup promises that its business aims to change the world; GE beat them all to that line by at least
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