General Instrument Corporation
423 Broome Street, New York City (1925)
477 Broadway, New York City (1920s)

181 West Madison Street, Chicago, Illinois (1950s)

General Instrument got its start as an electronics manufacturer based in New York in 1923. It was not until the 1950s, however, that General Instrument embarked upon the series of acquisitions that would help it to become a technology conglomerate. Under the direction of company president Moses Shapiro, General Instrument bought a wide variety of electronics companies, most of them based in the New York area. Through these activities, the company moved into a number of different fields, including silicon transistor and semiconductor manufacturing.

The company was active until 1997, when it split into General Semiconductor (power semiconductors), CommScope and NextLevel Systems (the cable and satellite TV division, which later reverted to GI name). The new (post-split) General Instrument Corporation was later acquired by Motorola and became the Motorola Connected Home Solutions division.

In 1946 it was announced that GI would be merged into Emerson Radio & Phonograph Co. GI and its subsidiaries, including the F. W. Fickles Company would continue to function as a separate division of Emerson.

In 1951 General Instrument merged a previous purchase, the F. W. Sickles Company, into General Instrument, making it a subsidiary. Three years later, in 1954, the company formed a Canadian subsidiary when General Instrument-F. W. Sickles of Canada, Limited, was created. This company subsequently purchased Watt Electronic Products, Limited, of Kitchener, Ontario. In 1955 the company returned to its geographic roots, buying the Automatic Manufacturing Corporation of Newark, New Jersey. In the following year Micamold Electronics Manufacturing Corporation of Brooklyn and T. S. Farley, Limited, of Hamilton, Ontario, were added.

Jerrold was GI's original cable TV brand, active from 1948 into the early 1990s. Around 1993, GI dropped the Jerrold branding. The Jerrold brand was prominent on both addressable and non-addressable cable TV converter boxes that were used on non-cable ready sets and cable-ready sets with premium pay services. "Jerrold" is the middle name of the company's founder, Milton Jerrold Shapp.