Last month, the National Geographic Channel launched a new television series called “Breakthrough,” focusing on scientific discovery. Each of the six episodes follows scientists seeking to solve daunting challenges, from global pandemics to figuring out how the brain works. The series was developed by the channel and GE, and produced by Oscar winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Howard even directed an episode focused on aging, which airs this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.
GE may be better known for jet engines, power plants and software, but “Breakthrough” is not the company’s first brush with Hollywood. In 1954, it hired actor and future President Ronald Reagan to host a national TV show called “General Electric Theater.”
Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories. Image credit: Museum on Innovation and Science Schenectady
Like “Breakthrough,” the show aired every Sunday at 9 p.m., on CBS television and radio. Don Herbert, the creator and host of the iconic educational series “Mr. Wizard,” was Reagan’s “progress reporter,” gathering news on GE’s “contributions to progress through research, engineering and manufacturing skill,” according a story published in The Monogram, a GE magazine. The topics tackled by the new series prove that GE’s quest to solve looming global problems hasn’t changed.
Reagan and future First Lady Nancy Reagan opened their “all-electric” house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., to TV cameras while it was still under construction. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories, reporting on everything from jet engine development — the technology was barely a decade old back then — to the future of electricity. Several broadcasts in 1956 even took place inside Reagan’s brand-new “all-electric” hilltop home in Pacific Palisades, California, as part of GE’s “Live Better — Electrically” marketing campaign. The Reagan residence served as the model home “pointing the way to the electrical future.”
“It wouldn’t be same house without the lighting, which is so unique and beautiful … the real thrill comes with sundown when the lights come on,” future First Lady Nancy Reagan told The Monogram.
![Reagan5[2]](http://gereports.cdnist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/24165331/Reagan52-1024x550.jpg)
Critics liked the show, too. The Boston Herald opined that “apparently the people at GE assume that we are not idiots and are interested in some intelligent facts about their company and its work. It won’t start a trend but we thank them anyway.”
Besides Howard and Grazer, “Breakthrough” includes a number of other Hollywood luminaries. Paul Giamatti, Angela Bassett, Peter Berg, Brett Ratner, Akiva Goldsman and Howard each directed an episode. Adrien Brody and Jason Bateman helped with narration.
Reagan inside a GE factory in 1956. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
Similarly, Reagan brought a number of stars onto “General Electric Theater,” including Fred Astaire, Lou Costello, James Dean, Joan Fontaine, Ernie Kovacs and others. By 1956 it was the third-most-popular show on American television, reaching over 25 million viewers every week.
“General Electric Theater” and Reagan signed off for the last time in 1962. “We have tried consistently to put on the very best stories available using the best actors and actresses, directors and producers we could find,” Reagan wrote in The Monogram. “We on the ‘Theater’ believe that year in and year out, we have had the highest-quality half hour on television.”
Reagan was a hit on TV and off. Here he’s featured in a hallway at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, N.Y. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady