Austintown Coils Plant

The Austintown Coils Plant of the General Electric Company of America did not produce complete lamps, but was a component factory which supplied materials to other final-assembly lamp plants. Its main products were coiled tungsten wires, employed as the filaments of incandescent lamps, cathodes for fluorescent lamps and electrodes for discharge lamps. It would presumably have also produced filaments for electronic valves. Following GE's takeover of the Hungarian Tungsram company in 1990, much of the component manufacturing was transferred to those considerably lower cost East-European facilties. The dwindling demand for American-made filaments brought Austintown to a close in 2008 with the loss of the final 73 jobs.