Elmer E. Hanna was working at Gates Iron Works when he developed a pneumatically powered screen shaker used to filter sand for molding. Other companies became interested in buying a screen shaker but Hanna's employer was not interested in getting into that business so they gave him permission to take his design and start a new business. The E. E. Hanna Co. was established in 1900. The following year they incorporated as the Hanna Engineering Works In 1903 he developed a riveter, followed by special machinery for pressing oil from cotton seeds and baling cotton. In 1914 they began selling the air cylinders and valves that they were already making for their own products.

None of the above would merit listing on this site, which is focused on woodworking and metalworking machinery plus the engines and motors that power them. But by 1921 Hanna was making a wall-mounted radial drilling machine, which does qualify. This type of machine was likely intended for boiler manufacture and other applications where numerous holes need to be drilled over a wide area, but the required accuracy and hole size do not justify the large expense of a traditional radial drilling machine.

In 1903 the firm was manufacturing the Hanna Automatic Quick-Acting Vise.

Hanna Engineering Works is now Hanna Corp. and is many decades out of the radial drilling machine business.

Information Sources

• 1909-06-03 Iron Trade Review: "The Hanna Engineering Works, Chicago, has purchased the patents and business of the Rathbone Molding Machine Co., Detroit, Mich., and hereafter will manufacture the‘multiple type of molding machines at its works. J. A. Rathbone and James T. Lee, formerly with the Rathbone company, are now connected with the Hanna Engineering Works."
• 1909-06-24 Iron Trade Review lists Hanna Engineering Works as a maker of stoping drills, a type of rock drill for mining.
• 1914-09-03 Steel, in an article on exhibitors at the upcoming Chicago Foundry and Shop Exhibition. "VULCAN ENGINEERING SALES CO., Chicago.—The products of the Q. M. S. Co. and the Hanna Engineering Works will be exhibited, including a cold metal cut-off sawing machine, air hoists and trolleys, pneumatic sand shakers, etc.; represented by J. T. Georgeson, W. H. Huelster, David M. Whyte, A. F. Jensen, Philetus W. Gates and James T. Lee."
• February 1921 Machinery lists Hanna Engineering Works as makers of cranes, hand traveling cranes, locomotive cranes, wall radial drilling machines, air hoists, and perhaps more that were on pages lost when that journal volume was bound.
• 1922-09-07 Trade Review has an article on Hanna Engineering Works' pneumatic toggle and lever press The company address was 1765 Elston Avenue, Chicago.
• December 1922 Boiler Maker lists Hanna Engineering Works as makers of air hoists, lubricators, rotary planers, horizontal punches, reamers, pneumatic riveters, sand sifters, metal saws, rotary shears, pneumatic tools, and I-beam trolleys.
• The website of Hanna Corp. provides a company history.
• Foundry, Vol. 21, No. 126, Feb. 1903, Pg. 211.