By 1890, Thomas Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric. At about the same time, Thomson-Houston Company, under the leadership of Charles A. Coffin, gained access to a number of key patents through the acquisition of a number of competitors. Subsequently, General Electric was formed by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric of Schenectady, New York and Thomson-Houston Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, and both plants remain in operation under the GE banner to this day. The company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant as headquarters for many years thereafter.

In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average and still remains after 114 years, the only one remaining on the Dow (though it has not continuously been in the DOW index).

In 1911 the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) was absorbed into General Electric's existing lighting business. GE then established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio. Nela Park is still the headquarters for GE's lighting business. In 1935, GE was one of the top 30 companies traded at the London Stock Exchange.

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was founded by GE in 1919 to further international radio. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales from 1919, when GE began production, until separation in 1930. RCA would quickly grow into an industrial giant of its own.

GE's long history of working with turbines in the power generation field gave them the engineering know-how to move into the new field of aircraft turbosuperchargers. Led by Sanford Moss, GE introduced the first superchargers during WWI, and continued to develop them during the Interwar period. They became indispensable in the years immediately prior to WWII, and GE was the world leader in exhaust-driven supercharging when the war started. This experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine that was demonstrated in the US in 1941. Although their early work with Whittle's designs was later handed to Allison Engine Company, GE Aviation emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers second only to the well-founded, and older, British company; Rolls-Royce plc, which led the way in innovative, reliable and efficient, high-performance, heavy-duty, jet engine design and manufacture.

GE was one of the eight major computer companies through all of the 1960s — with IBM, the largest, called "Snow White" followed by the "Seven Dwarfs": Burroughs, NCR, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA, UNIVAC and GE. Within the industry, this group was also referred to as the "BUNCH", and IBM was referred to as "Big Blue", a name it retains today.

GE had an extensive line of general purpose and special purpose computers. Among them were the GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 series general purpose computers, the GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060 real time process control computers, and the Datanet 30 message switching computer. A Datanet 600 computer was designed, but never sold. It has been said that GE got into computer manufacturing because in the 1950s they were the largest user of computers outside of the United States federal government. In 1970 GE sold its computer division to Honeywell.

In 1986 GE reacquired RCA, primarily for the NBC television network. The remainder was sold to various companies, including Bertelsmann (Bertelsmann acquired RCA Records) and Thomson SA which, ironically, traces its roots to Thomson-Houston, one of the original components of GE.

In 2002 Francisco Partners and Norwest Venture Partners acquired a division of GE called GE Information Systems (GEIS). The new company, named GXS, is based in Gaithersburg, MD. GXS is a leading provider of B2B e-Commerce solutions. GE maintains a minority ownership position in GXS. Also in 2002, GE bought wind turbine manufacturing assets of Enron Wind after the Enron scandals.

In 2004 GE bought 80% of Universal Pictures from Vivendi and Vivendi bought 20% of NBC forming the company NBC Universal. GE then owned 80% of NBC Universal and Vivendi owned 20%.