Thomson was the oldest son of Alexander Thomson, a farmer, and Elizabeth (Hay) Thomson. He was born on October 25, 1853 in Fochabers, Morayshire, Scotland. In 1854 the family emigrated to the United States and settled on a farm at Marion, Wayne County, N. Y. Here Thomson spent his youth.
He obtained a common-school education at Marion, Wayne County. At the age of sixteen he left home and went to Rochester, N. Y. , where he found employment in a jewelry store and devoted his spare time to the study of mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering.
His studies in combination with the intricate and delicate work of watch and clock repair developed his natural bent for mechanics as well as his inventive talent.
In 1877 he obtained his first patents, all for improvements in watches, including two escapements, a regulator, and a stem-winding device. About 1880 he moved to Brooklyn, where he continued his inventive work and by 1884 had obtained several patents on mechanical movements such as a ratchet and pawl and a differential screw.
He had meanwhile begun to give particular attention to improvements in water meters and printing presses. The first of his patented improvements of the former, devised between 1883 and 1885, he assigned to a manufacturer in Brooklyn, while the first of his inventions in the latter field--an intermitting circular feed motion, perfected in 1887--he assigned to the Colt Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, Hartford, Connecticut.
He now went to Hartford and in the next three years, as an employee of the Colt company, made additional improvements which resulted in the production of the Thomson Printing Press. In the meantime, he also obtained ten patents for improvements in water meters, including his basic patent of the disk water meter, December 20, 1887.
Leaving the Colt company about 1890, he organized in Brooklyn the John Thomson Press Company and the Thomson Meter Company, both of which organizations he directed until shortly before his death. The Thomson Press became standard equipment in some 15, 000 job-printing plants throughout the country while some 20, 000, 000 Thomson disk-type water meters were put into service in the United States and abroad.
He organized the Electric Zinc Company of London, England. Because of his wide experience and practical knowledge in the electrical field, he was at one time chief engineer of the Primary Electrical Subway Commission of New York, which undertook the construction of the first underground conduit for telegraph and telephone wires in that city.
He died in Brooklyn.
Besides looking after his manufacturing interests Thomson was a registered patent attorney and was retained in a number of important patent cases. He was awarded in all some 350 patents--for his improvements in printing presses and water meters, and also for a number of improvements in electric furnaces, for a process for refining metallic zinc, and for the manufacture of zinc oxide.
He was an active member of a number of clubs and technical societies both in New York and London, and was president of the Engineers' Club of New York, 1898-1901.
In 1887 he married Alice Elizabeth McKee of Canandaigua, N. Y. , who with two sons and a daughter survived him.
