Charles A. Coffin

American businessman, born in 1844 in Fairfield, Maine, and died in 1926 in Locust Valley, New York. After twenty years in the shoe manufacturing business, he moved into the electrical industry in 1883, taking charge of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company alongside engineers Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston and building it into a serious rival to Thomas Edison's electric lighting ventures. When Thomson-Houston and Edison's companies merged to form General Electric in 1892, Coffin became the new company's first president, a post he held until 1912, then serving as chairman until 1922. He arranged a cross licensing agreement on key electrical patents with Westinghouse Electric in the late 1890s that secured General Electric's position in the industry, and in 1901 he established a research laboratory for the company, among the first industrial research facilities in the United States. Under his leadership General Electric built power plants across the American South and backed development of the Curtis steam turbine for electricity generation.