The George Gorton Machine Company was founded in 1893 by George Gorton II (1865-1955) in his family's Racine, Wisconsin, greenhouse. This first small machine shop served for many years as the location for Gorton's inventing and enterprises. After producing a line of disc grinders, Gorton sold his business in 1903, and due to illness, moved to California. However, he returned to Racine the following year and continued his work. Among his inventions during the period 1906-1916 were the pantograph engraving machine, the rotary breaching machine (to form steel axe heads from rough forging), an internal tooth cut-off saw and a grinder for the saw (for cutting and sawing bar steel), the first tire mold engraver (to cut tread design into tires, replacing the old vulcanizing procedure), and a fuse ring router (for routing the powder train grooves in fuse heads of shrapnel and shells used during World War I). The company also built aircraft engines and racing cars.
In 1916 a new building was constructed, and within the next few years the firm began to specialize in the development of pantomills and other die, mold and light vertical milling machines for the plastics and die-casting industries. In 1932, Gorton built a manual duplicator, the first of the tracer-controlled two-dimensional production profilers, and a three-dimensional machine for die-sinking. This equipment allowed metal pieces to be milled or machined from identical size masters or patterns. The complete line of Gorton pantomills and vertical mills was introduced at the 1935 Machine Tool Builders' Show in Cleveland, Ohio.
Expansion of the company rapidly continued, and in 1940 another new plant was built. During World War II Gorton was licensed by the Swiss government to make Swiss type automatic screw machines (for making air-craft instrument and fire control parts), and was the only American company to receive such a license. (At the time, none of these vital machines could be imported into the United States, and the drawings were brought from Europe in diplomatic mail pouches to avoid capture.) The Gorton Machine Company was the first Racine plant to receive an “E” award for its production efforts.
The post-war period saw a concentration on contour (profiling and duplicating) milling devices and the development of hydraulic tracer machines for a new market. By 1966 Gorton built the broadest line of contour milling equipment in the country. In April 1967, the family-owned George Gorton Machine Company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kearney and Trecker Corporation of Milwaukee. As the Gorton Machine Corporation, the company remains under the supervision of George Gorton III (also a member of the Kearney and Trecker board of directors), and continues to produce the types of milling machines that it pioneered.
