Charles Matcham
American based English businessman (1862–1911)
Charles Arthur Matcham (15 January 1862 – 22 September 1911) was an English civil engineer and businessman who spent most of his life in America. He founded numerous businesses, mostly within the cement-making industry, in areas including Phillipsburg, in New Jersey, and Allentown, and Portland in Pennsylvania. He was the younger brother of the English theatre architect Frank Matcham.
Life and career
Charles Matcham was born on 15 January 1862 in Torquay, Devonshire. He was the third son of Charles Matcham (1826–1888), a brewer, and his wife, Elizabeth née Lancaster (1830–1905). Charles Jr. was educated at schools in Hambledon in Hampshire, and then Brighton, East Sussex.
Matcham entered the engineering industry in 1875 in London where he received an honours mention for his mechanical drawing and designs at the National Art Training School in South Kensington. From 1877–80 he worked as a mechanical draftsman in London. In 1879 he joined the newly-formed American Bell Telephone Company and built telephone exchanges in Europe, including Antwerp, Brussels, and Charleroi.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Matcham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.