Drawing detail from an article in the 1892-09-07 issue of Electricity

A. D. Quint (Alanson Danforth Quint) manufactured multi-spindle drill presses and milling machines from the early 1890s until at least 1915. Quint seems to have been the inventor of the turret drilling machine, now most strongly associated with considerably later products from Burgmaster Corp. Apparently Turner Machine Co. of Danbury, CT, aquired the rights to Quint's drills, and were manufacturing them in 1921. Mr. Quint's 1920 obituary stated that he had retired 3 years prior, so he may have sold his business in 1917.

We have seen a few ads and brief mentions for A. E. Quint of Hartford, spanning 1897 to 1915 and we have also seen an A. O. Quint ad. After a fair bit of investigation, we think it most likely that the differing middle initials were an attempt to track the success of different promotional venues.

"A. E. Quint" advertisement from the September 1898 Machinery

Information Sources

• Geer's Hartford City Directory for 1872 lists "Quint A. D. machinist, h. 48 Van Block."
• Article in the 1892-09-07 Electricity.
• The July 1894 issue of The New England Magazine has an article on "Connecticut at the World's Fair". In a section of the article discussing the competition for display space comes the following extract.

  The first application for space in this department from Connecticut was that of A. D. Quint of Hartford, for a drill press. No allotment had been made to him up to February, when the writer made a personal appeal in his behalf. The chief said he had applications for space for such exhibits which would cover acres of his floor, and he had no room for them. "But Mr. Quint says his press will do what no other drill press in the world can do," was the reply. That settled it. Four feet of space was found for it. It was enough to enable the exhibitor to fully establish the claim made for his invention.

• Geer's Hartford City Directory for 1897 lists "Quint Alanson D. manufacturer turret drills, 80 Huyshope, h. 8 Clinton."
• Advertisement in the 1898-04-14 American Machinist. The address was 3 Clinton St., Hartford, Conn.
• The 1904 Iron Age Directory lists A. D. Quint as a maker of milling machines, drilling and tapping machines, turret drills, tapping machines, and drill & tap holders.
• The 1909 Iron Age Directory lists A. D. Quint as a maker of turret drills, tapping machines, and drill & tap holders.
• The 1910-02-03 issue of Iron Age has the following item.

  Vertical Turret Machine.—A. D. Quint, Hartford, Conn. Catalogue No. 10. Pertains to a line of vertical turret drilling, tapping and chucking machines. These machines bear the same relation to an ordinary drill press as a turret lathe does to a regular engine lathe. It is claimed that one of these machines will finish all the holes in large or irregular pieces, or Jig work, at one setting without any loss of time to change the tools or adjust the work. Some of the illustrations show the machines in actual use while others depict either the machines themselves or parts thereof. An illustrated description of the No. 2 turret drill appeared in The Iron Age November 1. 1906.

• The June 1912 Mill Supplies has an article on the semi-annual convention of the National Machine Tool Builders' Association, which was held in Atlantic City in mid-May of that year. Among the new members admitted was A. D. Quint of Hartford, Conn.
• From the book, From Industry to Alchemy: Burgmaster, a Machine Tool Company, by Max Holland, 1989:

  Fred Burg knew that what mattered was not who thought of an idea, but which builder could make it better. Nothing proved this maxim more than Joe Burg's discovery of an advertisement in an old magazine one day, many years after Burgmaster had become synonymous with turret drills. Leafing idly through a 1915 trade magazine, he came across a full-page advertisement for, of all things, a turret drill, manufactured by the A. E. Quint Company of Hartford, Connecticut. Use the Quint turret drill, said the ad, "for quick and accurate production of duplicate parts... will finish holes... at one setting without loss of time to change work or tools." Despite their outmoded features, the three belt-driven models depicted in the ad were all strikingly familiar. Fred Burg had not been the first to invent the turret drill after all.

• A genealogy site provides birth and death information on Alanson Quint: "Alanson Danforth Quint was born on 27 Mar 1847 in Lexington, Me. He died on 16 Jul 1920." Other sites indicate that Quint was married to Celestia D., née Fitzgerald. They had no children. Based on various Hartford city directories of the era, there were no other Quint households in the city and so we have no explanation for the appearance of the name "A. E. Quint".