Gibson
Orville Gibson founded the company in 1902 as the "Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co. Ltd." in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to make mandolin-family instruments. Gibson invented archtop guitars by constructing the same type of carved, arched tops used on violins. By the 1930s, the company was also making flattop acoustic guitars, as well as one of the first commercially available hollow-body electric guitars, used and popularized by Charlie Christian. In 1944, Gibson was bought by Chicago Musical Instruments (CMI), which was acquired in 1969 by Panama-based conglomerate Ecuadorian Company Limited (ECL), that changed its name in the same year to Norlin Corporation. Gibson was owned by Norlin Corporation from 1969 to 1986. In 1986, the company was acquired by a group led by Henry Juszkiewicz and David H. Berryman.
Coopers' Company and Coborn School
The "Nicholas Gibson Free School" was founded in 1536 by a prominent citizen of the City of London who earned his living as a grocer. On his death in 1549 Gibson's wife, Avice, took over the running of the school, which could take up to sixty boys. In 1552 she asked the Coopers' Company to undertake the management of the school for her, and thus the school included the company's title in its name. The school was situated in Ratcliff, on the North side of the River Thames between Shadwell and Limehouse which is now a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Schoolhouse Lane is still there and marks the place where the School and the Coopers' Company's Almshouses were located for over three hundred years.