Inventor. He was a former vice president and director of research of the General Electric Company, who revolutionized the electrical industry with his development of ductile tungsten in 1908. Coolidge's pliable tungsten filaments made light bulbs longer-lasting and less expensive, and ductile tungsten was at the heart of the Coolidge Tube, the prototype of modern X-ray tubes. Coming from humble beginnings, his father was a cobbler, who supplemented his income by farming seven acres. His mother was a dressmaker in her spare time. His early education was in a small local school, which had one teacher for the first to sixth grade. During the summer, he adventured into several hobbies, many being scientific, including a camera with a darkroom. He graduated from high school as valedictorian in his class of thirteen. With limited finances, he started to work in a factory instead of going to college. By working in factories early in his career, he learned about metal making. A friend suggested with his excellent scholastic record and his mechanical and electrical aptitudes, he might be able to obtain a state scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He applied, the grant was awarded, and in the fall of 1891, he went to Boston to begin college, studying electrical engineering. Except for the Military Academy at West Point, MIT was the only institution of learning at that time offering an engineering degree. During the summers between his junior and senior year, he was at the East Pittsburgh plant of Westinghouse Electric. Illness kept him out of school for a year, thus graduating with the class of 1896. He taught at Cambridge University in England in early 1897, and again 1901 to 1905. By the fall after graduation, he held a position as an assistant in physics at MIT. His interest in engineering had changed to science and research. He received a grant to go to Leipzig, Germany for graduate study. He quickly learned German. In June of 1899 he earned a doctorate summa cum laude. The next fall, he began to teach physics at MIT. Through a colleague at MIT, he learned about the new General Electric Research Laboratory and was soon offered a place in the laboratory along with 30 other scientists and a few MIT students. After visiting the laboratory, he accepted the offer in 1905. Mainly, his research was focused on the extreme brittle tungsten filaments. He discovered that the filaments would not be as brittle if they were passed through a rolling mill with heated rolls, which could be done at a low cost. He received professional recognition for his discovery of the improved incandescent lamp, which was easily marketed in lamps. Lamps made with ductile tungsten filaments appeared on the market in 1911, and they have dominated the lighting industry. This invention was later used in vacuum cleaners and car ignitions. He worked with the group, who developed a radiation machine to treat cancer. During World War I, he was with the group, who developed the first successful submarine-detection system. He was appointed assistant director of the Research Laboratory and was appointed Director of the Research Laboratory in 1932. In 1940 he was appointed vice president and director of research for GE. He applied for a patent for his improved light bulb discovery but a decade later in 1928, a United States court ruled it was not an invention. In 1914 he was awarded the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which was the first of a long series of medals and honors that marked his career. In 1913 he invented the Coolidge Tube for X-ray machines, which made clearer images. By 1916, this invention was patent as was one for a rotating X-ray table. During his career, he patented 84 inventions, mainly related to the use of the X-ray machine. Besides the Rumford Medal, he received the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1926, the Louis E. Levy Medal in 1927 and Franklin Medal in 1944 all from the Franklin Institute. In 1927 he received the Edison Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in London, the Faraday Medal from the Institution of Electrical Engineers of England in 1939, and the Röntgen Medal in 1963 from Germany. In 1937 he received from the University of Zurich in Germany an honorary M.D. degree in acknowledgement of his outstanding achievements in the field of applied physics in medical science, particularly in the field of X-rays. He received two honorary doctorate degrees from universities in the United States. He retired in 1944 but remained a consultant, and living to be 101 years old. On December 30, 1908, he married the daughter of a banker and the couple had a son and a daughter, but in February of 1915, his wife died. In 1916, he married for a second time to a nurse that was caring for his mother and children. He is a distant cousin of United States President Calvin Coolidge, sharing the common ancestor of Obadiah Coolidge born 1694 in Massachusetts.