Charles Hotchkiss Norton (November 23, 1851,

Plainville, Connecticut Plainville is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 17,525 at the 2020 census. History Plainville first was inhabited by Europeans around 1650. By the 1660s, the land was incorporated as land for nearby Farm ...

– October 27, 1942,

) was an American

mechanical engineer Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...

and designer of

machine tool A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All m ...

s. After working for the Seth Thomas Clock company in Thomaston, in 1886 Norton became Assistant Engineer with the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company at

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

, redesigning their universal

grinding machine A grinding machine, often shortened to grinder, is a power tool (or machine tool) used for grinding. It is a type of machining using an abrasive wheel as the cutting tool. Each grain of abrasive on the wheel's surface cuts a small chip from the ...

. In 1890 he became a partner in the newly established Leland, Faulconer & Norton Company at

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, designing and constructing machine tools. Returning to Brown & Sharpe in 1896, he designed a grinding machine with larger and heavier

grinding wheel Grinding wheels contains abrasive compounds for grinding and abrasive machining operations. Such wheels are also used in grinding machines. The wheels are generally made with composite material . This consists of coarse-particle aggregate press ...

s, capable of supplying machine parts for the emerging

automobile industry The automotive industry comprises a wide range of companies and organizations involved in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing, and selling of motor vehicles. It is one of the world's largest industries by revenue (from 16 % such ...

. In 1900 he left Brown & Sharpe to found the Norton Grinding Company in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

with support from the Norton Emery Wheel Company (founded by an unrelated Norton); the two firms merged in 1919, with Norton as their Chief Engineer until 1934, when he became their Consulting Engineer. On April 8, 1925, he was a recipient of The John Scott Medal and Premium for his invention of "accurate grinding devices of high power". Charles H. Norton House, the house in Plainville in which Norton lived until his death in 1942, is today a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

References

1851 births 1942 deaths American mechanical engineers {{US-mechanical-engineer-stub