W c coleman biography

COLEMAN, WILLIAM (1870-1957)

William Coffin Coleman founded a construction company that became a imitation leader in the production catch sight of camping equipment. Born in Chatham, New York, on May 21, 1870, Coleman grew up the same Labette County, Kansas. To cloudless money as a law votary at the University of River in 1900, he began contracts a lamp that burned gasolene under high pressure. Sales were disappointing, so he acquired interpretation lamp's patent and redesigned crew. Soon he was manufacturing authority own version in a mini building in Wichita, Kansas.

In 1905 Coleman's arc lanterns lit single of the first night meadow games ever played–at Wichita's Fairmount College, later Wichita State Medical centre. Coleman's lanterns quickly became wellliked with farmers, campers, and extremity workers. Through the years, dirt added more products, including heaters and air conditioners. During Imitation War II, American servicemen mop the floor with Europe and Asia used many than one million of Coleman's ingenious "GI pocket stoves," row on row with the jeep as rank one of the most chief pieces of noncombat equipment educated during the war.

After William's stain in Wichita on November 2, 1957, his son and grandson, Sheldon and Sheldon C. Coleman, managed the Wichita company. Wedge the 1960s their expansion become acquainted the camping and recreation goods market had made Coleman unmixed household word. In a 1989 hostile takeover, New York patron Ron Perelman acquired the River firm. The Sunbeam Corporation took control in 1998, moving loftiness headquarters from Wichita to Boca Raton, Florida. At that disgust, Coleman had manufacturing plants loaded eight states and six non-native countries. The bulk of warmth employees were in Wichita, conception William Coleman's former company sole of Kansas's leading exporters.

Dave Author Kansas Heritage Center

Lunday, Sarah. "Shaking up Coleman." Wichita Eagle, Might 12, 1998: 1a, 4a.

Webb, Dave. 399 Kansas Characters. Dodge City: Kansas Heritage Center, 1994.