Frank Manly Thorn
Frank Manly Thorn | |
---|---|
Superintendent, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey | |
In office September 1, 1885 – June 30, 1889 | |
President | Grover Cleveland |
Preceded by | Julius Erasmus Hilgard |
Succeeded by | Thomas Corwin Mendenhall |
Personal details | |
Born | Fredonia Academy | December 7, 1836
Profession | Lawyer, journalist |
Frank Manly Thorn (December 7, 1836 – April 14, 1907) was an American lawyer, politician, government official, essayist, journalist, humorist, and inventor. He served as the sixth Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. The first non-scientist to hold that position, he guided the Coast and Geodetic Survey through a critical period of reform following the exposure of improprieties under his predecessor, and he defended it from being abolished or diminished by its critics.
Early life
Thorn was born in
Writing career
In 1867, Thorn returned to Erie County, New York. He settled in East
On January 7, 1871, the literary magazine Every Saturday accused Clemens of plagiarizing its material in a "Byng" article the Express had published on December 2, 1870. Deeply concerned that such mistaken charges of plagiarism would continue to follow him as long as "Slocum" or "Byng" published in the Express, Clemens asked the magazine to retract its accusation and banned "Slocum" and "Byng" from contributing to the newspaper.[2][6]
Thorn then began contributing articles to the
Political career
In 1870, Thorn was elected to the Erie County Board of Supervisors.
Coast and Geodetic Survey
Investigating improprieties
The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, a component at the time of the
The
When Cleveland became president in 1885, James Q. Chenoweth became First Auditor of the Department of the Treasury, and he began to investigate improprieties at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, and
On July 1, 1885, his first day as Chief Clerk of the Internal Revenue Bureau, Thorn became chairman of a three-man Department of the Treasury commission investigating the corruption Chenoweth believed he had uncovered in the Survey.[3][9] Thorn remained with the committee through July 22.[2][3] With the Survey's leadership in disgrace, Cleveland needed to find an outsider to reform its lax financial practices. He turned to Thorn, who already had met the Coast and Geodetic Survey staff during his three weeks of work on the Treasury committee investigating the organization.[3] Cleveland made Thorn the Acting Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey on July 23, 1885,[3] only 22 days after be began work for the federal government, and appointed him as its permanent superintendent on September 1, 1885.[2]
Superintendency
Knowing of the management problems at the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Thorn at first approached its personnel with a degree of hostility, but during his three weeks on the Treasury investigative committee he determined that many of the accusations made against Survey personnel were petty or could not be substantiated, and concluded that in many cases the accusers were motivated by the potential for their own career advancement if they destroyed the careers of others. Upon assuming the superintendency, he quickly concluded that Coast and Geodetic Survey employees were largely innocent of wrongdoing and that he could manage the problems that did exist. He then set his mind to the issues of rebuilding the Survey's integrity and reputation and ensuring that it demonstrated its value to its critics. He knew that the Survey's improper financial and budgetary practices had to end and that increased scrutiny resulting from investigations into the Survey's operations would mean tight budgets in the future.[10]
Thorn was the first non-scientist to be appointed superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Cleveland placed him in the position primarily to reform the lax financial practices that had come to permeate the organization rather than to provide scientific leadership. Thorn knew that he lacked knowledge of Coast and Geodetic Survey operations and the scientific concepts behind them, so he chose as his assistant
Thorn championed the importance of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's inland geodetic work and how it supported, rather than duplicated, the work of the Geological Survey and was in any event an important component of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's hydrographic work along the coasts. He also advocated civilian control of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, pointing out to Cleveland and others that earlier experiments with placing it under U.S. Navy control had fared poorly.[15] Thorn described the Coast and Geodetic Survey's essential mission as, in its simplest form, to produce "a perfect map,"[16] and to this end he and Colonna championed the need for the Survey to focus on the broad range of geodetic disciplines Colonna identified as necessary for accurate chart- and mapmaking: triangulation, astronomical observations, levelling, tidal observations, physical geodesy, topography, hydrography, and magnetic observations.[17] To those who advocated transfer of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's work to the Navy Hydrographic Office, Thorn and Colonna replied that although the Navy could perform hydrography, it could not provide the full range of geodetic disciplines necessary for scientifically accurate surveying and mapping work.
With Thorn's emphasis on production of "a perfect map," the Coast and Geodetic Survey redoubled its cartographic efforts during his superintendency. It achieved some of the greatest precision in triangulation, and over the longest distances in history, during work related to the arc of the
Although Chenoweth's critique of the advance funding of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's field work necessitated restricted budgets for topographic work during Thorn's tenure, Thorn was able to manage funding such that the Survey actually managed to increase its topographic output with reduced budgets. A singular achievement of the Survey during Thorn's tenure was the promulgation of a document entitled "Instructions and Memoranda for Descriptive Reports to Accompany Original Sheets" which detailed a new requirement for Survey personnel to include in the results of their field work a narrative describing all important aspects of the landscape and seascape in the vicinity of charted areas so as to improve the usefulness and quality of the Survey's charts,
Under Thorn, the Coast and Geodetic Survey made significant contributions to oceanography in the Gulf Stream and Gulf of Mexico, especially in the design and employment of new equipment for recording the speed and direction of ocean currents reliably at great depths.[23] In studying magnetism, the Survey made strides in the relatively new discipline of reconstructing the configurations of magnetic declination in and around North America in previous centuries and using these reconstructions to correlate historic azimuthal bearings and correct them to true north.[24]
All of these efforts had broader applications than just to mapmaking, but they nonetheless led to an increase in the number and quality of charts and maps. This led to Thorn and Colonna establishing a new Chart Division at Coast and Geodetic Survey headquarters in 1887. The new division brought together various chartmaking responsibilities that had been scattered throughout the agency and allowed central management of the updating and production of new maps and charts for the first time. Thorn also made changes in office procedures for producing charts that allowed more rapid production at less cost.[25]
In 1886, the Allison Commission wrapped up its investigation and published its final report. Although it determined that all topographic responsibility outside of coastal areas would henceforth reside in the U.S. Geological Survey, it approved of the Coast and Geodetic Survey continuing its entire program of scientific research, and recommended that the Coast and Geodetic Survey remain under civilian control rather than be subordinated to the U.S. Navy. It was a victory for Thorn and Colonna.[15] Another victory followed in 1887, when Thorn headed off a congressional attempt to subordinate the Survey to the Navy despite the Allison Commission's findings, providing Cleveland with information on the previous lack of success of such an arrangement.[15] In a letter of January 31, 1903, which in effect was the first memoir ever written by a superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Thorn wrote to Otto Hilgard Tittmann, then superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, "I doubt if anybody but Colonna and myself knew how close to the wind the Survey sometimes sailed, or how desperately vicious, and even villainous, were some of the agencies employed to wreck it..."[26]
Conclusion of superintendency
Cleveland lost the 1888 presidential election, and between Election Day on November 6, 1888, and the inauguration of his successor, Benjamin Harrison, on March 4, 1889, Congress passed the Sundry Civil Bill, which included a new requirement regarding the superintendency of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Until Cleveland appointed Thorn in 1885, the United States Secretary of the Treasury had always selected the superintendent; Cleveland's appointment of Thorn opened the door to greater congressional involvement in the selection process. In the Sundry Civil Bill, Congress stipulated that henceforth the president would select the superintendent with the consent of the U.S. Senate. Thorn had never received Senate confirmation, and support for returning to having a scientist as superintendent – considered necessary to the prestige of the Coast and Geodetic Survey – had grown over the years of his superintendency; moreover, Thorn lost presidential support for his superintendency when Cleveland left office. After Harrison took office, Thorn stayed on briefly pending the appointment and confirmation of his successor, physicist and meteorologist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. With Mendenhall poised to replace him, Thorn resigned his post on June 30, 1889.[27]
Thorn's tenure was a controversial one; some contemporary observers and later historians criticized him as a non-scientist who favored bureaucratic procedure over science and whose agenda favored the transfer of power over the Coast and Geodetic Survey's spending and priorities to non-scientific Department of the Treasury officials and away from the pure scientists who had made those decisions previously;
Later life
After leaving the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Thorn returned to his home in Orchard Park, New York, where he continued to operate his farm. On October 12, 1886, while still superintendent, he had applied for a patent for a
Thorn also busied himself as a political activist and banquet speaker in Erie County, New York, and was a frequent contributor of essays to local newspapers.[2]
Personal life
Thorn married the former Eola Smith (1848–1923).[2][31] They had a daughter, Gertrude (1868– ? ),[2] and three sons, Frank Bret (1871–1944),[32] Channing C. (1873–1928),[33] and Ralph (1875–1949).[2][34]
Death
Thorn eventually was diagnosed with progressive muscular atrophy. After a lengthy illness, he died at his home in Orchard Park on April 14, 1907. He was buried at Friends Cemetery in Orchard Park.[2]
Commemoration
Thorne Bay in Alaska is named for Thorn. The name of the bay was misspelled when published in the original record, and the spelling was never corrected to match the spelling of Thorn's last name.[35]
Notes
- ^ Although all sources give Thorn's birth date as "1836," "December 1836," or "December 7, 1836," a photograph of the headstone at his gravesite at Find-A-Grave: Frank Manly Thorn shows that the headstone gives his birth year as 1837, with no other date information.
References
- ^ Wilson, James Grant, and John Fiske, Appletonʼs Cyclopedia: Volume VI: Sunderland–Zurita, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1889, p 102.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o twainquotes.com "HY SLOCUM" IDENTIFIED
- ^ a b c d e f "Sailing Close to the Wind: Superintendent Thorn Rescues the Coast and Geodetic Survey (1885-1889), p. 4" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-07-17. Retrieved 2016-02-19.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, p. 5.
- ^ a b c famousamericans.net "Frank Manly Thorn" from Appletonʼs Encyclopedia
- ^ a b c d Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 4-5.
- ^ a b Sailing Close to the Wind, p. 2.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 3-4.
- ^ a b Anonymous, Centennial Celebration of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916, p. 139.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, p. 9.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 5, 8-9.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 5-8.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, p. 10.
- ISBN 0-521-433-95-9, p. 176.
- ^ a b c Sailing Close to the Wind, p. 11.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, p. 13.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 14-15.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 15-18.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 18-19.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 19-23.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 24-27.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 27-29.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 30-31.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 32-33.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 33-38.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 11-14.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 41-42.
- ^ See for example Slotten, p. 176, for a negative depiction of Thorn and his priorities.
- ISBN 0-253-37201-1, p. xxvii.
- ^ Sailing Close to the Wind, pp. 42-43.
- ^ Find-A-Grave Eola Smith Thorn (1848 - 1923)
- ^ Find-A-Grave: Frank Bret Thorn
- ^ Find-a-Grave Channing C. Thorn
- ^ Find-A-Grave Ralph Thorn
- ^ Southeast Conference: Thorne Bay