Thomson-Houston Electric Company
The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was a company for the manufacture of electrical systems and devices based in Lynn ( Massachusetts ), founded in 1883 and merged with the Edison General Electric Company to form General Electric in 1892 .
Origin and structure
Elihu Thomson , an American teacher and electrical engineer of English origin, initially founded the American Electric Company with his colleague and former teacher Edwin J. Houston and donors from Connecticut . When Thomson and Houston put the company up for sale in 1882, the stationery dealer Silas Barton saw the opportunity to use electric light commercially. As a reference object he wanted to equip the Veterans Club in Lynn with electric lighting and invited a couple of shoe manufacturers from Lynn to found the Thomson-Houston Electric Company . In 1883 this investing company bought the American Electric Company and moved its headquarters to Lynn, Massachusetts.
Charles A. Coffin was the head and financial head of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company . Edwin W. Rice was responsible for the production . Elihu Thomson headed the development office. When Charles P. Steinmetz had developed his magnetic hysteresis laws in the research laboratory of the Eickemeyer & Osterheld Manufacturing Company in 1891 , Edwin W. Rice ordered the purchase of Eickemeyer's company in 1892 in order to get Steinmetz. After the Thomson-Houston Electric Company had merged with the Edison General Electric Company to form the General Electric Company (GE) with headquarters in Schenectady ( New York ) in 1892 , this newly founded company merged with the Eickemeyer & Osterheld Manufacturing Company in 1893, retaining the name . Charles A. Coffin, who led the company for the first 20 years, became head of GE. The Thomson Houston main facility in Lynn is still in operation today, as is Edison's main manufacturing facility in Schenectady.
Offshoot of the same name from General Electric
After the merger to form General Electric , it founded the British Thomson-Houston (BTH) subsidiary in Great Britain and a sister company in France called Compagnie Francaise Thomson-Houston (CFTH) , which in turn was the mother of the Technicolor company, whose name it took over as a group in 2010 .
Services
Elihu Thomson contributed to the development of electrical engineering with over 700 patented innovations.
The power supply for electric railways realized by Frank Julian Sprague in 1888 was improved by Thomson-Houston in 1889, and this version led to the international success of the electric drive. It was taken over by the UEG , which later became part of the AEG .
swell
- Hammond, John Winthrop. Men and Volts, the Story of General Electric , 1941. 436 pages.
- Carlson, W. Bernard. Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
- Woodbury, David O. Elihu Thomson, Beloved Scientist (Boston: Museum of Science, 1944)
- Haney, John L. The Elihu Thomson Collection American Philosophical Society Yearbook 1944.
- The Northwest German trade, industry, trade, marine, deep-sea fishing and art exhibition . Compiled from official sources and correspondence from excellent reporters, Romen'sche Buchhandlung, Bremen 1890
- Official catalog of the Northwest German Trade and Industry Exhibition . Rudolf Mosse publishing house, Bremen 1890
