In the early 1890s Edwin C. Henn and Reinhold Hakewessell were employees at Pratt & Cady in Hartford, CT, makers of industrial valves, fire hydrants and steam fittings. The two men left that steady employment and opened a small shop in Bloomfield, CT, for manufacturing machined metal parts. They developed a four-spindle automatic lathe to manufacture parts from bars that were fed through the lathe spindles. Cams were used to advance the various cutters as they were needed. The multiple spindles allowed the interleaving of operations which considerably increased throughput. This highly automated machine needed a minimum of human intervention and one operator could manage multiple machines at once.

In 1893 they applied for a patent on their automatic lathe which was granted the following year. Their business was under-capitalized and they struggled to fund the building of the lathes they needed to manufacture parts, so they convinced a mutual friend, Bloomfield farmer William J. Gabb, to invest in a separate business that would manufacture the lathes and also sell them to others. In 1895 the Acme Screw Machine Co. of Hartford, CT, was established.

In 1901 the Acme Screw Machine Company moved to Cleveland, OH, where it merged with the National Manufacturing Co. to form the National Acme Manufacturing Co.

In 1907, the Windsor Machine Co., of Windsor, VT, introduced a 4 spindle bar machine known as the Gridley. By 1915 Acme had acquired that company and began selling the Gridley Automatic Turret Lathes as part of their line of machinery.

In 1968 The National Acme Company merged with the Cleveland Twist Drill Company to form the Acme-Cleveland Corp.

Bourn & Koch, Inc. is now the OEM for National Acme machinery.

Information Sources

• 1894 patents 530,179 and 530,180 were granted to Reinhold Hakewessell and Edwin C. Henn, respectively, and assigned to those two man plus Horace S. Fuller, Nathan F. Miller and William J. Gabb. All the men except Henn were from Hartford; Henn was from Bloomfield, CT. These men seem to have been the ones who established Acme Screw Machine. A great-granddaughter of A. W. Henn, brother of Edwin C. Henn, reports that her great-grandfather was involved in raising money for Acme Screw Machine to make the move to Cleveland. She also mentions that National Mfg. Co. was a parts manufacturer that used Acme machines.
• October 1921 Machinery.

  George O. Gridley has resigned as manager of the Windsor plant of the National Acme Co. His outside interests have become of such volume and importance that he has decided to devote his entire time to banking, development work, and other affairs. Mr. Gridley's work in the building up of the manufacturing organization of the Windsor plant from its small beginning to its present proportions covers a period of a quarter of a century, during which time he brought into play his ability as an inventor, a business organizer, and a financier.

  Mr. Gridley was born in Harwinton, Conn., in 1869. In industrial work he was first employed by the Waterbury Button Co., and then went to Springfield, Vt., to learn the machinist's trade. He studied stenography during his leisure hours evenings, and was employed for a few months with the Jones & Lamson Co. as stenographer and office-man, also spending some time on the road as salesman. From there he went to Indian Orchard, Mass., where he started the Indian Orchard Screw Co., making bicycle parts, and later he went to Windsor, Vt., as superintendent of the Windsor Machine Co. In 1902 the Gridley single-spindle automatic was developed; later, the idea of the multiple-spindle machine was gradually evolved, until the first machine was built in 1908. From that time on the business grew rapidly.

  In 1915, when the National Acme Co. took over the Windsor Machine Co., Mr. Gridley was appointed manager of the Windsor plant. Previous to that he had been vice-president and general manager of the Windsor Machine Co., and he was also vice-president of the firm of Potter, Johnson & Gridley, Ltd., of England, which built a large factory in Birmingham. This factory was taken over by the British Government at the outbreak of the war. Mr. Gridley was a charter member of the Society of Automotive Engineers. From 1917 to 1919 he served as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives. He is president of the State National Bank of Windsor.

• The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History has a short history on the Acme-Cleveland Corp, which includes some early history of The National Acme Company.
• A Profile of the National Acme Company is available at Findamachine.com.
  
• The 1949 booklet National Acme: An Informal History is a transcription of a speech given by then-president and chairman Frederic H. Chapin. This booklet summarizes the beginnings of the industrial revolution and discusses the different types of lathes, culminating in the multi-spindle automatic lathe as originated by National Acme. He points out that these machines are usually called "automatic screw machines" even though screws were rarely manufactured on them. The genesis of National Acme is described,
• The 2012 book Images of America: Windsor, by Liz Ross. "Looking ahead at manufacturing in the early 20th century brings one back to the brick buildings on Main Street. The Windsor Machine Company, located on Union Street, is where Frank Cone began his career. In 1902, when Maxwell Evarts became one of the company's primary investors, the value of its stock increased tenfold. The National Acme Corporation, or NAMCO, then purchased it. It was NAMCO that propelled Windsor to the forefront of the precision tool and manufacturing industries."