Heinrich Koppers
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Dr. Heinrich Koppers was a German engineer and founder of the Koppers Company, an industrial organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Heinrich Koppers developed a new type of coke oven that economically recovered the byproduct chemicals of the coking process. American steel producers brought Dr. Koppers to the United States and he built his first ovens in 1907 in Joliet, Illinois.
In March, 1912, he founded H. Koppers Company in Chicago, Illinois. In 1914, Dr. Koppers sold the patents for his by-product coke ovens to industrialist Andrew Mellon for $300,000, and the Koppers Company, founded in Illinois, was reorganized with main offices in Pittsburgh, establishing a research department at the Mellon Institute.