<i>It just seems strange to think that the pioneer of diesel locomotion may no longer be a supplier.</i>
Hey, RCA's gone. They pioneered virtually everything electronic, prior to the transistor (which came out of left field and helped kill them, they never got as good or dominant as they should have been in the field). IBM had their tough times - Sperry's out of it (Univac, anyone?). Pioneers come, they stay, sometimes they go. To be fair, EMD was'nt the first with a diesel loco, but they were the first to make it work well, and man, they nice styling pre WWII. Industrial design - another lost art in the US
<i>"When I want jet engines I'll go to Pratt & Whitney, when I want lightbulbs I"ll go to GE." </i>
Heh. Westinghouse fared much worse - test pilots comented of the various Westinghouse disasters "They put out more heat than their toasters and about as much thrust" Circle W got creamed in the field...
<i>Of course this statement was made when GE was a relative newcomer to the jet engine field and P&W was already an established entity.</i>
Commercial. GE was a force from day one in military. But Pratt had the then revolutionary J-57, which was a virtual bombshell when it came out.
<i>The big difference here is that P&W, as well as GE and Rolls-Royce, all have a fairly equal share of the jet engine market with products that are all very close to each other in efficiency and cost.</i>
Get a few airline pilots started on GE Vs Pratt Vs Rolls, some day
<i> Unfortunately the same can't be said for the locomotive market. GE surpassed EMD and EMD has never been able to completely catch up. </i>
GE did it on marketing. They've always been 2nd tier to EMD, but they can out market and hit the numbers that make accounting happy, and wrap it up in a slick brochure. Neither's really a huge force overseas, and not a factor in Europe, though that's a function of management rather than engineering (no reason why EMD couldn't make a competitive diesel in Europe, or EMUs for that matter - GM has the best engineers out there, they just never get to show it...)
Of course, now it's GE vs MPI, I guess. Always boils down to Edison Vs Westinghouse I the end