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52-462: The Thor Power Tool Company was a manufacturer of tools, washing machines , motorcycles, vacuum cleaners, rotary irons, electric ranges, kitchen sinks, speed snips, electric shoe shine machines, and the Juvenator. Thor was founded in 1893 by four men: John D. Hurley, Edward Hurley, John Patrick Hopkins , and Roger Charles Sullivan . In 1894, another Thor brother, Neil C. Hurley Sr., was added to

104-543: A clutch , which allowed the machine to switch direction, and an emergency stop rod. The new Thor washer was mass marketed throughout the United States beginning in 1908. There is a dispute over who was the first inventor of the automatic washer. A company called Nineteen Hundred Washing Machine Company of Binghamton, NY , claims to have produced the first electric washer in 1906; a year before Thor's release. Additionally, it has been stated in various articles on

156-411: A bent portion of the shaft, or a separate arm or disk attached to it. Attached to the end of the crank by a pivot is a rod, usually called a connecting rod (conrod). The term often refers to a human-powered crank which is used to manually turn an axle, as in a bicycle crankset or a brace and bit drill. In this case a person's arm or leg serves as the connecting rod, applying reciprocating force to

208-549: A crank as a part of its mechanism. The crank was used to manually setup the starting date for a prediction. Later evidence for the crank, combined with a connecting rod in a machine, appears in the Ancient Greek Hierapolis sawmill in Roman Asia from the 3rd century AD and two stone sawmills at Gerasa , Roman Syria , and Ephesus , Greek Ionia under Rome, (both 6th century AD). On the pediment of

260-463: A mighty hammer. The name became popular and spread to other company products. The first factory was part of what had been a corset factory in Aurora, Illinois. Soon, they occupied the entire building. Railroads continued to be the major customers of the company's pneumatic products during these early years. The Thor enterprise had been organized into two companies at first: one to handle manufacturing, and

312-582: A new crusade, made illustrations for a paddle boat and war carriages that were propelled by manually turned compound cranks and gear wheels (center of image). The Luttrell Psalter , dating to around 1340, describes a grindstone which was rotated by two cranks, one at each end of its axle; the geared hand-mill, operated either with one or two cranks, appeared later in the 15th century; Medieval cranes were occasionally powered by cranks, although more often by windlasses . The crank became common in Europe by

364-546: A small modification would have been required to convert it to a crankshaft . Al-Jazari (1136–1206) described a crank and connecting rod system in a rotating machine in two of his water-raising machines. His twin-cylinder pump incorporated a crankshaft. A crank is later also described in an early 15th century Arabic manuscript of Hero of Alexandria 's Mechanics . The first rotary hand mills, or rotary querns, appeared in Spain (600 BC – 500 BC), before they spread to

416-535: A supplier of washer dryer combos and stacking washers and dryers. Soon after the brand acquisition, the company introduced a new line of laundry appliances under the Thor brand. Crank (mechanism) A crank is an arm attached at a right angle to a rotating shaft by which circular motion is imparted to or received from the shaft. When combined with a connecting rod, it can be used to convert circular motion into reciprocating motion, or vice versa. The arm may be

468-509: Is a crankshaft which also serves the purpose of an axle . It is used on steam locomotives with inside cylinders. Because of the findings at Ephesus and Gerasa the invention of the crank and connecting rod system has had to be redated from the 13th to the 6th c; now the Hierapolis relief takes it back another three centuries, which confirms that water-powered stone saw mills were indeed in use when Ausonius wrote his Mosella. Because of

520-497: Is dated to the late 2nd century AD. However an often cited modern reconstruction of a bucket-chain pump driven by hand-cranked flywheels from the Nemi ships has been dismissed as "archaeological fantasy". In ancient literature, there is a reference to the workings of water-powered marble saws close to Trier , now Germany , by the late 4th century poet Ausonius ; about the same time, these mill types seem also to be indicated by

572-486: Is not used pejoratively and should not reflect the attitude of society towards women today. Both the washing machine and gladiron were big hits in households throughout the country and the world. The Arcade Toy Company made tiny replicas of both machines for doll houses. In 1920, the Hurley Machine Company introduced the Thor vacuum cleaner, believed to be the first electric vacuum cleaner manufactured in

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624-422: Is rotatably mounted within the tub containing the wash water". A series of blades lifted the clothes as the cylinder rotated. After 8 rotations in one direction, the machine would reverse rotation to "prevent the cloths from wadding up into a compact mass". Drive belts attached to a Westinghouse motor connected to three wheels of different sizes, which moved the drum during operation. The design also included

676-571: The Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines and ascribed to the Spanish Muslim surgeon Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi ; however, the existence of such a device cannot be confirmed by the original illuminations and thus has to be discounted. The Benedictine monk Theophilus Presbyter (c. 1070−1125) described crank handles "used in the turning of casting cores". The Italian physician Guido da Vigevano (c. 1280−1349), planning for

728-493: The crossbow 's stock as a means of exerting even more force while spanning the missile weapon (see right). In the textile industry, cranked reels for winding skeins of yarn were introduced. Around 1480, the early medieval rotary grindstone was improved with a treadle and crank mechanism. Cranks mounted on push-carts first appear in a German engraving of 1589. From the 16th century onwards, evidence of cranks and connecting rods integrated into machine design becomes abundant in

780-527: The cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), gearing (in water mills and clocks) — were known in Roman times. A rotary grindstone − the earliest representation of one − which is operated by a crank handle is shown in the Carolingian manuscript Utrecht Psalter ; the pen drawing of around 830 goes back to a late antique original. A musical tract ascribed to

832-509: The 1940s, Thor introduced the Automagic hybrid washer/ dishwasher . The top-loading machine included both a removable clothes washing drum and a dish-washing drum. The Automagic was widely marketed but disappeared from the marketplace soon after its introduction, as many consumers soured on the idea of washing dirty clothing and dishes in the same machine. The Thor trademark was acquired in 2008 by Los Angeles–based Appliances International,

884-575: The 2nd century AD was excavated in Augusta Raurica , Switzerland . The 82.5 cm (32 inches) long piece has fitted to one end a 15 cm (6 inches) long bronze handle, the other handle being lost. An true iron crank about 40 cm (16 inches) long was excavated, along with a pair of shattered mill-stones of 50 to 65 cm (20 to 26 inches) diameter and diverse iron items, in Aschheim , close to Munich . The crank-operated Roman mill

936-450: The East. The handle near the outer edge of the rotary part makes the crank, a human arm powering the rotation would be the connecting rod. According to F. Lisheng and T. Qingjun, the hand-crank of the rotary quern was different from a crank, which was the combination of a hand-crank and a push-and-pull connecting rod by a hinge. The Antikythera mechanism, dated to around 200 BC, used

988-541: The Greek Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia , demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire The three finds push back the date of the invention of the crank and connecting rod by a full millennium: With the crank and connecting rod system, all elements for constructing a steam engine (invented in 1712) — Hero 's aeolipile (generating steam power),

1040-497: The Hierapolis mill, a waterwheel fed by a mill race is shown powering via a gear train two frame saws which cut rectangular blocks by the way of some kind of connecting rods and, through mechanical necessity, cranks. The accompanying inscription is in Greek . The crank and connecting rod mechanisms of the other two archaeologically attested sawmills worked without a gear train. A Roman iron crank of yet unknown purpose dating to

1092-587: The Hurley family name for both companies continues to cause some confusion, but at least it stayed within the Hurley brothers family and there never seemed to be any legal acrimony over the logo use among all three companies. John D. Hurley, one of the co-founders of the Independent Pneumatic Tool Company, died in 1928. Ralph Cooper, a veteran with the company, headed the business until Neil C. Hurley, Sr., succeeded him as president of

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1144-547: The Hussite Wars shows a boat with a pair of paddle-wheels at each end turned by men operating compound cranks (see above). The concept was much improved by the Italian engineer and writer Roberto Valturio in 1463, who devised a boat with five sets, where the parallel cranks are all joined to a single power source by one connecting-rod, an idea also taken up by his compatriot Francesco di Giorgio . In Renaissance Italy ,

1196-502: The Independent Pneumatic Tool Company and the Aurora Automatic Machinery Company for the Thor motorcycle. There was never any corporate or financial relationship between the washing machine company and the power tool company. Neil C. Hurley. Sr., had retired from the board of directors of the tool company before assuming leadership of the Hurley Machine Company. The appearance of the Thor product name and

1248-529: The Internet that a Ford Motor Company employee invented the electric washer in late 19th century or early 20th century. Since Ford was incorporated in 1903, the Ford story seems unlikely to be valid. Regardless, Thor remains one of the first (if not the first) company to manufacture and sell an automatic washing machine on a large scale. Thor invented the tilt-a-whirl system in which the agitator , typically in

1300-579: The Sears and Indian motorcycles. Part of this company was in Aurora and the other part was in Chicago. This acquisition took place near the turn of the century and the Thor Building in downtown Chicago came into being. Thor manufactured motorcycles from the early 1900s until 1918. It was Thor that introduced to the world the first sidecar for motorcycles. The decision to get out of the motorcycle business

1352-427: The Thor board of directors. The company would soon be organized and later known as the Independent Pneumatic Tool Company. The railroad industry first brought success to Thor. Its first product was the "Thor" pneumatic hammer to pound rivets and drill holes for bolts used to fasten the fire box of a locomotive to its boiler. The name "Thor" referred to: Thor , the mythical god of thunder, frequently pictured as wielding

1404-400: The Thor logo and name on its new venture, but the fact that another brother co-founded the tool company no doubt played an instrumental role. Perhaps the tool division felt that the use of the Thor name and logo on household products would provide good advertising. At any rate, the Hurley Machine Company was now in business producing Thor washing machines using the same logo that had been used by

1456-467: The United States. Sometime during the 1920s, the Hurley Machine Company became a subsidiary of the newly formed Electric Household Utilities Corporation, still under the control of the Hurley brothers. In 1929, the Hurley Machine Company acquired the Juvenator exercise belt product. This product would hook to any door and allow the user to slip the belt around their waist and vibrate their pounds away. While this should have proved dynamically successful, once

1508-466: The Western Han dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD). It was first used in the manually operated quern and long (grain decortication item) before evolving into other devices. According to F. Lisheng and T. Qingjun, the hand-crank of the rotary quern was different from a crank, which was the combination of a hand-crank and a push-and-pull connecting rod by a hinge. Eventually crank-and-connecting rods were used in

1560-414: The abbot Odo of Cluny ( c.  878 −942) describes a fretted stringed instrument which was sounded by a resined wheel turned with a crank; the device later appears in two 12th century illuminated manuscripts. There are also two pictures of Fortuna cranking her wheel of destiny from this and the following century. The use of crank handles in trepanation drills was depicted in the 1887 edition of

1612-538: The ancient practice of working the pipe by treading. The earliest evidence for the fitting of a well-hoist with cranks is found in a miniature of c. 1425 in the German Hausbuch of the Mendel Foundation . The first depictions of the compound crank in the carpenter's brace appear between 1420 and 1430 in various northern European artwork. The rapid adoption of the compound crank can be traced in

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1664-425: The crank, combined with a connecting rod in a machine, appears in the Ancient Greek Hierapolis sawmill in Roman Asia from the 3rd century AD and two stone sawmills at Gerasa , Roman Syria , and Ephesus , Greek Ionia under Rome, (both 6th century AD). On the pediment of the Hierapolis mill, a waterwheel fed by a mill race is shown powering via a gear train two frame saws which cut rectangular blocks by

1716-424: The crank. There is usually a bar perpendicular to the other end of the arm, often with a freely rotatable handle or pedal attached. Familiar examples include: Almost all reciprocating engines use cranks (with connecting rods ) to transform the back-and-forth motion of the pistons into rotary motion. The cranks are incorporated into a crankshaft . It was thought that evidence of the earliest true crank handle

1768-407: The depression hit, like so many good products, the Juvenator disappeared from the marketplace in the early thirties. Neil C. Hurley, Jr., succeeded his father as president of Thor in 1944. Neil C. Hurley, Sr., the co-founder of the company, passed away in 1948. In 1953, the company recognized the impact of the Thor name and officially adopted it as the corporate title, Thor Power Tool Company. Using

1820-471: The earliest evidence of a compound crank and connecting-rod is found in the sketch books of Taccola , but the device is still mechanically misunderstood. A sound grasp of the crank motion involved demonstrates a little later Pisanello who painted a piston-pump driven by a water-wheel and operated by two simple cranks and two connecting-rods. The 15th century also saw the introduction of cranked rack-and-pinion devices, called cranequins, which were fitted to

1872-613: The early 15th century, often seen in the works of those such as the German military engineer Konrad Kyeser . Devices depicted in Kyeser's Bellifortis include cranked windlasses (instead of spoke-wheels) for spanning siege crossbows, cranked chain of buckets for water-lifting and cranks fitted to a wheel of bells. Kyeser also equipped the Archimedes screws for water-raising with a crank handle, an innovation which subsequently replaced

1924-484: The early sixties, Thor Power Tool Company was acquired by the Stewart-Warner Corporation. A short time later, Neil C. Hurley, Jr. died from a third heart attack, February 9, 1965, at the age of 54 and the Thor brand name almost died. In the early part of the twenty-first century, the Thor name and logo was resurrected on washing machines manufactured from Australia. The new company had no ties with

1976-469: The established Thor logo, Thor Power Tool Company manufactured a broad line of industrial, service, mining, and household tools—some of which were operated by air, some by electricity, and some by gasoline. Rotary pneumatic tools replaced the large, heavy piston type in 1928. New line followed new line as the years passed. Auto and aircraft makers succeeded railroads as Thor's biggest customers. In 1951, overseas manufacturing and distribution were expanded with

2028-523: The idea was dropped. In 1906, Neil C. Hurley, Sr., and his brother, Edward Hurley, formed the Hurley Machine Company. Their initial product was the first electric washing machine in the world, the Thor washing machine . Although the tool company and the washing machine company were two separate entities, the name "Thor" had acquired a reputation for quality and dependability. It is unclear how these two Hurley brothers, Neil and Edward, received permission to use

2080-543: The inter-conversion or rotary and reciprocating motion for other applications such as flour-sifting, treadle spinning wheels, water-powered furnace bellows, and silk-reeling machines. Ancient Egyptians had manual drills resembling a crank at the time of the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BCE) and even a hieroglyph for the tool. However the Ancient Egyptian drill didn't operate as a true crank. Later evidence for

2132-518: The linear piston motion into rotational motion. Internal combustion engines of early 20th century automobiles were usually started with hand cranks (known as starting handles in the UK ), before electric starters came into general use. The last car model which incorporated a crank was the Citroën 2CV 1948-1990 The 1918 Reo owner's manual describes how to hand crank the automobile: A crank axle

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2184-413: The original company, other than the use of the Thor logo and name. Thor washing machine The idea of an automatic washing machine had been around for many years. However, these were crude mechanical efforts that typically involved a manually operated crank or similar design. In many ways, the patent of the new Thor washer sounds modern, even today. The patent states that a "perforated cylinder

2236-416: The other to handle sales. Although he took no part in the management, "Diamond" Jim Brady allowed his name to be used as President of the fledgling company for several years. It was a marketing ploy, for Brady was the nation's best known salesman and promoter at that time. Thor soon acquired another factory, the Aurora Automatic Machinery Company. This company made parts for bicycles and motorcycles, including

2288-662: The purchase of Armstrong-Whitworth and Co., in England. In 1954, Thor acquired Speedway Manufacturing, makers of the Speedway line of tools, including the famous Silverline. Thor's other properties included the Cincinnati Rubber Manufacturing Company, a farm living research center near Huntley, Ill., and Drying Systems, Inc., which made smokehouses, among other items. By 1959, Thor Power Tool Company's annual volume had surpassed $ 30 million. By

2340-411: The shape of disk, tilted back and forth within the washer drum while simultaneously rotating. The early 1930s tilt-a-whirl design was the first agitator to move water in both a horizontal and vertical motion. The 1936 version of the Thor tilt-a-whirl incorporated sculpted hands embossed on the agitator. At the time, some Thor dealers painted the fingernails of the hands on demonstration machines. In

2392-591: The technological treatises of the period: Agostino Ramelli 's The Diverse and Artifactitious Machines of 1588 alone depicts eighteen examples, a number which rises in the Theatrum Machinarum Novum by Georg Andreas Böckler to 45 different machines, one third of the total. Cranks were formerly common on some machines in the early 20th century; for example almost all phonographs before the 1930s were powered by clockwork motors wound with cranks. Reciprocating piston engines use cranks to convert

2444-418: The tool company, consolidating power under his name. Shortly after introducing the electric washing machine, the two Hurley brothers, Neil and Edward, introduced the Thor rotary iron, commonly known as the "Gladiron" as opposed to the hand-held "sad irons" of the day that required stove top heating by the user. Several variations of the "Gladiron" were introduced. One model would serve as an actual attachment to

2496-450: The washing machine. These early washing machines had wringers at the top; by taking off the wringer and attaching the gladiron, the "woman of the house", or her domestic servant, could do their ironing above the machine. The other model was a portable stand-alone model. The Hurley Machine Company advertised heavily to women and the term, "woman of the house", aptly applies to the domestic position viewed by society of many women at that time. It

2548-560: The way of some kind of connecting rods and, through mechanical necessity, cranks. The accompanying inscription is in Greek . The crank and connecting rod mechanisms of the other two archaeologically attested sawmills worked without a gear train. The crank appears in the mid-9th century in several of the hydraulic devices described by the Banū Mūsā brothers in their Book of Ingenious Devices . These devices, however, made only partial rotations and could not transmit much power, although only

2600-515: The works of the Anonymous of the Hussite Wars , an unknown German engineer writing on the state of the military technology of his day: first, the connecting-rod, applied to cranks, reappeared, second, double compound cranks also began to be equipped with connecting-rods and third, the flywheel was employed for these cranks to get them over the 'dead-spot'. One of the drawings of the Anonymous of

2652-399: Was entirely financial. There simply was more money to be made in tools, including the tools that made motorcycles, than the actual motorcycles themselves. As the company grew during the first decade of the twentieth century, it made four prototypes of the Thor automobile between 1909 and 1910. Unfortunately, the car, a giant six cylinder touring car, proved too costly to produce profitably and

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2704-429: Was found in a Han era glazed-earthenware tomb model of an agricultural winnowing fan dated no later than 200 AD, but since then a series of similar pottery models with crank operated winnowing fans were unearthed, with one of them dating back to the Western Han dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD). The Chinese used the crank-and-connecting rod in ancient blasting apparatus, textile machinery and agricultural machinery no later than

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