This partnership was established in 1869; their manufactory was The Atlantic Works, which went on to become one of the most important makers of woodworking machinery. In July of 1870, Thorne sold out to William S. Kelley and the name changed to Richards, Kelley & Co.

See the entry for Richards, London & Kelley for more history, including a detailed timeline of the various successor companies.

William H. Thorne

The earliest data points we have on William H. Thorne is the June 1870 patent 104,770, where Richards and Thorne are co-inventors.

In March 1871, Thorne received a patent for a clever mechanism to transfer power from a lineshaft to a shaft at floor level that can be moved around. A few months later he received a patent for an "improvement in portable drilling machines", patent 114,229. The latter patent was assigned to Thorne & De Haven , a new partnership that was created to manufacture Thorne's invention that combined the two patents: a portable radial drill suitable for drilling rivet holes in boiler plates and other large pieces of steel too big to bring to a fixed drill. The invention was very successful and by 1874 they had 40 employees making different sizes of their portable radial drill.

Thorne & De Haven became "Thorne, De Haven & Co." in about 1873 (a name change likely triggered by one or more minority partners joining the firm). The latest mention of them we have seen is from 1878; they were likely bought out by a larger firm about that time, although it is possible they simply shut down due to the poor economic conditions of the time. The next (and last) information we have found on Thorne is a 1900 tool-grinder patent that was assigned to machine tool maker William Sellers & Co., Inc., of Philadelphia.

Information Sources

• The dates come from the 1891 book, Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians, published by "The North American" newspaper, provides the years of operation. The lengthy passage is quoted in full under the entry for Berry & Orton. Note that this article gives the establishment date as 1860 rather than 1869. The 1860 date is inconsistent with all other evidence (such as patents that help establish Richards' employment history and residences) and therefore we believe that it is a typographical error.
• From Smithsonian Institution Libraries: "Wood working machines for ship work and car building, planing mills, etc. w/insert / Richards, Thorne & Co. / Philadelphia PA ca1870".
• From Journal of the Franklin Institute, January 1870 (Vol LIX No. 1, pp 6-11.
• From March 1871 issue of Journal of the Franklin Institute
• From patent 104,770, issued 1870-06-28, comes the names of the principals: John Richards and William H. Thorne. The patent itself is for a bandsaw, as illustrated in the January 1870 Journal of the Franklin Institute article mentioned above.