In March 1871, William H. 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.