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The story
Founded by Edwin J. Houston and Elihu Thomson in 1882, in Philadelphia.1
The company was founded as the American Electric Company by Elihu Thomson and Edwin Houston.
In 1882, Charles Albert Coffin led a group of investors—largely shoe manufacturers from Lynn, Massachusetts—who bought the company from investors in New Britain, Connecticut. They renamed it Thomson-Houston Electric Company and moved its operations to a new building on Lynn's Western Avenue.
Coffin led the company and organized its finances, marketing, and sales operations. Edwin Rice organized the manufacturing facilities, and Elihu Thomson ran the Model Room, a precursor to the industrial research lab.
In 1884, Thomson-Houston International Company was organized to promote international sales.
In 1885, the Lynn G.A.R. Hall was built with electric incandescent lighting by Thomson-Houston.
In 1888, Thomson-Houston supplied the Lynn & Boston Railroad with the generation and propulsion equipment for the Highland Circuit in Lynn, the first electric streetcar in Massachusetts.
In 1889, Thomson-Houston bought out the Brush Company (founded by Charles Brush) which resolved the arc lamp and dynamo patent disputes between them.
By 1892, the company had grown to some 4,000 employees and annual sales of $10,000,000 (equivalent to about $358,000,000 in 2025). A deal arranged by financier John Pierpoint Morgan merged the company with the Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, to form the General Electric Company.
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The Lynn and Schenectady plants remain to this day as the two original GE factories.
From Wikipedia’s article on Thomson-Houston Electric Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3