Frank Lyman Cone was an employee of the Windsor Machine Co. which had taken over the business and shops of the Robbins & Lawrence Co. In 1916 Cone left after National Acme bought the business, designed a new automatic lathe, and established the Cone Automatic Machine Co. to manufacture his lathe.

In 1957 the company acquired tractor attachment maker Pippin Construction Equipment, Inc., of White River Junction, VT, which it operated as their Conomatic Pippin Division, and in November 1957 an agreement with International Harvester was announced, where Conomatic Pippin and another firm (Wagner Iron Works of Milwaukee) would supply tractor, backhoe, and loader attachments for IH utility tractors. This arrangement continued until 1961 when IH began manufacturing their own attachments.

In 1972, Cone Automatic Machine Co. merged with the Blanchard Machine Co. Cone-Blanchard Machine Co. closed in 2002.

Information Sources

• The American Precision Museum website formerly had a biography of F. L. Cone. The text is preserved here. In a listing of members of the Machine Tool Hall of Fame:

  Frank Lyman Cone (1868-1936)

  Cone learned carpentry, blacksmithing, and general mechanics on his father’s farm. In 1891 he became a general repairman for the Connecticut River Railroad in a branch repair shop in Windsor, Vermont. In 1895 he moved to the Windsor Machine Co. which had started in the old Robbins & Lawrence Armory after Jones & Lamson moved to Springfield, Vt.

  After George Gridley joined the company and began to develop his single-spindle automatics. When National Acme bought Windsor Machine in 1916, Cone resigned. He started designing a new automatic and formed Cone Automatic Machine Co. to build it. His first machine was a conventional single spindle, but the second was a four-spindle machine that broke with all previous designs. He put all the cams at the top on one long shaft. This made it possible to build large multiple-spindle machines that had the operating positions down at a convenient working height.

  Elected 1996

• A Yesterday's Tractor forum post describes the Pippin/IH business.