Century-Old GE Bulbs Light Up 100th Anniversary Celebration of Nela Park

One hundred years ago—March 25, 1912 to be exact—executives and employees gathered at GE Lighting’s newly forming Nela Park campus to bury a sealed time capsule packed with a daily newspaper, pamphlets, pins, photos and some GE light bulbs representing available and emerging incandescent technologies of the era. The collection of treasures inside the capsule was placed inside a cornerstone of Marketing Building #307 where it was intended to speak to future generations about the state of lighting technology and the transformational growth that GE was experiencing in 1912.

Hundreds of GE Lighting employees and retirees recently gathered at the base of Building #307 for a real-time, once-in-a-lifetime history lesson. The time capsule was unearthed and its contents were carefully removed and put on display before being moved to a secure temperature- and light-controlled space across the Nela Park campus, near GE’s current multi-million dollar LED reliability and testing labs and clean room.

In a remarkable testament to the craftsmanship and quality of GE products and solutions at work for customers then and now, one of the tungsten filament lamps buried for 100 years showed signs of life. It was cleaned, screwed into a socket near the time capsule site and slowly powered up to the point of emitting light.

In April 2013, the company will bring Nela Park employees together for a ceremonial burying of a new time capsule, which is expected to include a GE Energy Smart LED 60W replacement, new consumer light bulb packaging debuting in 2012, marketing materials and an employee photo.

CEO Maryrose Sylvester unearthed lighting artifacts from a time capsule buried 100 years ago by the company’s founders.

The 100 year-old GE Lighting time capsule.

This 40-watt tungsten-filament incandescent bulb was one of five recovered when GE unearthed a 100-year-old time capsule buried at the base of a building at its Nela Park world headquarters. The bulb was cleaned up and tested at the time capsule ceremony and later in the lab. It both cases it emitted light.

A view of the Nela Park building where the time capsule was buried. Photographed December 2, 1912, prior to GE Lighting’s move to Nela Park.

Craig DiLouie

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