Charles Ranlett Flint

Flint was born on January 24, 1850, in Thomaston, Maine. His father, Benjamin Chapman, had changed the family name to Flint after being adopted by an uncle on his mother's side. The family moved from Maine to New York City where his father ran the family's mercantile firm Chapman & Flint, which had been founded in 1837. Flint married the composer Kate Simmons in 1883.

In 1868, Charles Flint graduated from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, which is now New York University Tandon School of Engineering, in Brooklyn. In 1871, he entered the shipping business as a partner in Gilchrest, Flint & Co., which became W. R. Grace and Company following a merger.

From 1876 to 1879, he served as the Chilean consul in New York City. He also served as consul general to the United States for Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

In 1892, he consolidated several companies to form U.S. Rubber. In 1893, he fitted out a fleet of naval ships for Brazilian Republic. He purchased the Esmeralda from the Chilean Navy and delivered it via Ecuador to Japan during the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1899, he repeated the success he had in forming U.S. Rubber by consolidating Adams Chewing Gum, Chiclets, Dentyne, and Beemans to form American Chicle. He was also responsible for the formation of The American Woolen Company that year. Some newspapers began to refer to him as "the Rubber King".

In 1911, he formed the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company through an amalgamation of stock acquisition of four companies: Tabulating Machine Company, International Time Recording Company, Computing Scale Company of America, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company. Amalgamation was unusual at the time – Flint described it as an "allied" consolidation. In 1924, CTR was re-christened as International Business Machines. Flint served on the board of directors of IBM until he retired in 1930.

He died on February 26, 1934, in Washington, D.C.