Charles Albert Coffin (Fairfield, Maine, 31 December 1844-14 July 1926) was the first President of General Electric corporation. He was born in Somerset, Massachusetts to Albert Coffin and his wife Anstrus Varney. He married Caroline Russell of Holbrook, Massachusetts and had three children.

He moved to join his uncle Charles E. Coffin at his shoe company in Lynn, Massachusetts at the age 18, where he spent the next twenty years. Eventually he established his own shoe factory named Coffin and Clough in Lynn.^[1]

In 1883, he was approached by another Lynn businessman, Silas E. Barton, to bring to town a struggling electric company from New Britain, Connecticut, finance it and to lead it.^[2] With the engineering work of Elihu Thomson, Coffin was able to build the company, renamed Thomson-Houston up to be an equal to Thomas Edison's companies. During this time they deployed power plants in the South, including two in Atlanta, Georgia to run the electric light and in 1889, Joel Hurt's electric streetcar line.^[3]

When General Electric was formed from Thomson-Houston and Edison's companies, Coffin was its first chief executive officer. The company was tested quickly during the Panic of 1893, where Coffin negotiated with New York banks to advance money in exchange for GE-owned utility stocks.^[1]

He was able to establish a duopoly of important electric patents with Westinghouse Electric in the late 1890s and in 1901 he established a research laboratory for the company.^[4] Suggested by Charles Proteus Steinmetz, this was the first industrial research lab in the US.^[5] He supported the work of GE engineers in the adaptation and development of the Curtis steam turbine which greatly advanced electric power generation. He retired from the board in 1922.

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References

• Ingham, John N. Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Page 173 Charles A. Coffin. Published 1983 Greenwood Publishing Group.
• Hammond, John W. Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric. Published 1941.
• Passer, Harold C. The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875-1900. Published 1953

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