Background
Charles Albert Coffin, the son of Albert and Anstrus (Varncv) Coffin, was born on December 30, 1844 in Somerset County, Maine, United States.
Charles Albert Coffin, the son of Albert and Anstrus (Varncv) Coffin, was born on December 30, 1844 in Somerset County, Maine, United States.
Coffin graduated from the Bloomfield (Maine) Academy.
Coffin began his business career in Boston. His interest centered in the shoe and leather industry, and he soon helped to found the firm of Coffin & Clough, a shoe-manufacturing establishment at Lynn.
In 1883 he became one of the Lynn Syndicate, formed for the purchase of the American Electric Company of New Britain, Connecticut, the head of which was Elihu Thomson. The plant was moved to Lynn and the name of the Company changed to the Thomson-LIouston Electric Company. Coffin himself knew little about electrical matters at this time, but he had a genius for organization and the ability to surround himself with the very best men in the technical field. He interested himself keenly in the work of such men as Elihu Thomson, Edwin J. Houston, and E. W. Rice. In 1892 the Thomson-Houston Company was consolidated with the Edison General Electric Company of New York in which all the activities and interests of Edison’s incandescent lamp development had been merged. Coffin was elected president of the new firm, which took the name of the General Electric Company, and he held this office until 1913. From 1913 to 1922 he was chairman of the board of directors.
During the World War (1915) Coffin created the War Relief Clearing House. After this was consolidated with the Red Cross, he transferred his tireless energy to the latter. He aided in the establishment of American scholarships for France and was generous in assisting young people, both in America and abroad, in their efforts toward an education. The Charles A. Coffin Foundation, created by the Board of the General Electric Company at the time of his retirement from active participation in its affairs, carries on some of his educational work through the award of fellowships to college graduates interested in continuing their research activities.
Coffin was a modest man who shunned publicity always and who found joy in his domestic life, his books, and his flowers.
Quotes from others about the person
“Coffin stands supreme in contributing more to create the magnitude of the whole electrical industry than any one or many men, by his encouragement of invention along useful lines, by his financial powers, by his talent for organization, by his tireless energy, by his course in introducing and his abilities in selling new apparatus. ” - T. C. Martin and S. L. Coles
Coffin was married in 1872 to Caroline Russel of Holbrook, Massachusetts.