George Henry Coates

Background

George Henry Coates was born on June 23, 1849 in Windsor, Vermont, United States. He was the only son of Henry Moss and Orra Natalia (Cone) Coates. His father was the village blacksmith.

Education

George attended the local public schools and Windsor Academy, during which time he developed a marked mechanical bent. He also attended night school at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, studying machine design and mechanical drawing.

Career

About 1865 Coates went to Worcester, Massachusetts and found employment with the Ethan Allen Firearms Company, and because of his aptitude quickly rose to the position of shop foreman. During this period, he won several prizes for his drawings at public exhibitions in Boston, receiving on one occasion the highest award for a colored drawing of a Corliss engine. Upon completing eight years’ service with the Ethan Allen company, Coates resigned about 1875 and went into business for himself as an expert machinist.

One of his first jobs was that of repairing hair-clippers then imported from England and France, and so skilful was his work that his fame spread, his jobs multiplied, and he made clipper-repairing his specialty. Coates soon saw that there were opportunities for making improvements on the imported clipper and from the extent of his repair business realized that a market existed for such a product. He had some slight experience in invention and in securing patents in that in 1874 he was a co-patentee of a fire kindler.

Accordingly in 1876 he devised and received his first patent for an adjustable hair-clipper, which was so much better than the imported variety that one of his New York repair customers immediately ordered five hundred. This marked the beginning of Coates’s clipper business which he immediately established in Worcester and which under his direct administration developed from a basement shop to a modern manufacturing plant of well over an acre of floor space and with established markets all over the world.

In addition to managing the plant Coates continued active in experimental and inventive work. Between 1880 and 1905 he obtained eight patents for clipper improvements. He devised an animal hair shears in 1885 and a fingernail cutter in 1886, but his most important invention was that of a flexible shaft. This he patented in 1892, but he made numerous improvements on it in the succeeding years. The device made it possible to transmit power to a machine tool to do work in difficult places such as drilling holes under water or grinding the inside of a complicated steel casting, through Coates’s several improvements of his flexible shaft as much as 150 horse-power have been transmitted, while shafting to transmit power to clippers as well as to delicate dental machinery became available also. The last patent, issued to him in 1920, when he was seventy-one years old, was an improvement on this device.

He also perfected and patented a number of unique tools all of which found a waiting market. Amongst these were a breast drill, drill press, mechanical hummer, and screw-driver. The latter is power-driven at high speed through a flexible shaft and is used by chair builders and others having to insert large numbers of screws. Coates was much interested in civic matters in Worcester and served for five years on the board of aldermen, one year as president.

Achievements

• George Henry Coates's fame rested on his inventions. The most notable of his achievements were his clipper improvements, animal hair shears, fingernail cutter, and flexible shaft.

Connections

Coates married Adelaide Long of Biddeford, Maine, on June 23, 1872, who with a son survived him.

Father:

Henry Moss Coates

Mother:

Orra Natalia (Cone) Coates

Spouse:

Adelaide Long of Biddeford