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Charles Albert Coffin (Fairfield, Maine, 1844-1926) was the first President of General Electric corporation.
He moved to join his uncle's shoe company in Lynn, Massachusetts at the age 18, where
he spent the next twenty years, and he established his own shoe factory.^[1]
In 1883, he was approached by another Lynn businessman to bring to town a struggling electic company from New Britain, Connecticut, finance it and to lead it.^[2] With the engineering work of their 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.^[5]
Suggested by Charles Proteus Steinmetz, this was the first industrial research lab in the US.^[6]
He retired from the board in 1922.
^[7]

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Notes

Notes

1. http://tardis.union.edu/community/project95/HOH/Biography/coffin.html
2. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,846675-1,00.html
3. Garrett, Franklin, ''Atlanta and Its Environs'', 1954, Vol.II, p.189
4. http://tardis.union.edu/community/project95/HOH/Biography/coffin.html
5. http://www.hbs.edu/leadership/database/leaders/155/
6. http://www.ge.com/research/grc_8_1.html
7. http://www.ge.com/en/company/companyinfo/at_a_glance/hist_leader_info.htm