George Washington

A pre-World War I advertisement introduced G Washington's Coffee to the public. Advert from The New York Times, February 23, 1914. George Constant Louis Washington (May 20, 1871 – March 29, 1946) was a Belgian-British inventor and businessman. He is best remembered for his improvement of an early instant coffee process and for the company he founded to mass-produce it, the G. Washington Coffee Company. Following then-current nationality law, which considered fatherhood primary, Washington was a British subject until he was naturalized as an American in May 1918.

Washington came to reside in Brussels and also attained a degree in chemistry at the University of Bonn in Germany. The US Census of 1900 records that Lina, like her husband, had English and Belgian ancestry (a Belgian father and an English mother). Louisa Washington (born May 1897),

After arriving in the New York area, Washington founded a company producing kerosene gas mantles. near Bellport in Suffolk County, which included the largest concrete swimming pool in New York at the time. Two attempted sales of the property, one in May 1926 for $150,000 and another in 1927, fell through. In 1938, Washington's younger sister, Mrs. Kenneth Merkel, along with her husband and son, moved to the estate on South Country Road. George Washington continued to own his estate until January 1943 when it was sold to Nathan Edelstein. The Washington Lodge was then operated as a hotel and restaurant, and large wedding receptions were held there. Washington Lodge was sold to Murray Wunderlich in 1950 and after 1952 was operated as a children's camp. In 1959, there was an attempt to have the estate rezoned so that it could again be used for a hotel. The Washington Lodge was sold to the Catholic Marist Brothers of the Schools as a summer retreat in 1960, and beginning in September 1970 was leased to the Bay Community School during the school year. Recently, the Washington Lodge estate was divided, and there have been conservation projects by local nonprofits and Bellport resident Isabella Rossellini. The Washington Lodge still stands, and is being used and restored by the Center for Environmental Education and Discovery, a nature center.

With his company's relocation to New Jersey, following the purchase of land there in 1927, he moved to the former estate of Governor Franklin Murphy at "Franklin Farms" in Mendham. Washington was a lover of exotic animals, as well as gardening. There is no indication, however, that the nomination was serious. George Washington would not have been eligible for that office, in any case, as he was foreign-born. There have been several "American Party"s in history—it is unclear if the nomination was a particular satire on any so-named movement at the time.

Invention and business This advertisement compares instant coffee to the "purity" of white refined sugar. Advert from The New York Times, January 2, 1922. After World War I, the coffee was reintroduced to the public with the slogan, Went to War! Home Again. Advert from the New York Tribune, June 22, 1919.

George Washington held over two dozen patents, in the fields of hydrocarbon lamps, cameras, and food processing. He was not the first to invent an instant coffee process, David Strang in New Zealand had the first patent in 1890 (Number 3518) for instant or soluble coffee and was sold under the name Strangs Coffee, another was chemist Satori Kato's work was a precursor, among others, but Washington's invention was the first effort that led to large scale commercial manufacture. There is some suggestion that he was inspired by seeing dried powder on the edge of a silver coffee pot while in Guatemala. Federico Lehnhoff Wyld, a German-Guatemalan doctor, along with Eduardo T. Cabarrus, also developed an instant coffee process about this time, Other radio sponsorships were for O'Henry Stories (1932, NBC Blue), Professor Quiz (1936, CBS), Uncle Jim's Question Bee (1936–39, NBC Blue), and Surprise Party (1946–47, CBS).

But the early instant coffee was also often considered of poor quality, of disagreeable taste, and little more than a novelty product.

Washington experienced some tax trouble with federal authorities, concerning the financial relationship between himself and his company. In November 1918, he contracted with the company for the use of his trade secrets in the manufacture of the coffee, and a month later gave a four-fifths stake in this to his immediate family. The Washingtons insisted that taxes needn't be paid on the family members' income, and the case went first to the Board of Tax Appeals, and then to the Court of Appeals, which in 1927 ruled against the Washingtons by a two-to-one decision. A petition to the Supreme Court was not accepted.

Washington's son, George Washington, Jr., served for a time as treasurer of his father's company, and, like his father, dabbled in invention, patenting a widely used photoengraving process for newspapers that was introduced by Fairchild Camera and Instrument in 1948.

Military contracts Washington's at-that-time unique product saw major use as combat rations in World War I. Coffee consumption on the battlefield was seen as valuable since it gave soldiers a caffeine boost. It was employed by the Canadian Expeditionary Force from 1914 until the American Expeditionary Force entered the war in 1917, and all production was shifted toward American military use.

quote|I am very happy despite the rats, the rain, the mud, the draughts [sic], the roar of the cannon and the scream of shells. It takes only a minute to light my little oil heater and make some George Washington Coffee ... Every night I offer up a special petition to the health and well-being of Mr. Washington.|American soldier|1918 letter from the trenches Clarence Mark, general manager of G. Washington, succeeded Washington in running the merged unit. His funeral was held three days later.

Legacy G. Washington coffee was discontinued as a brand by 1961, when Washington's New Jersey plant was sold to Tenco, by then a division of The Coca-Cola Company.

Patents