Frank Manly Thorn (December 7, 1836 – April 14, 1907) was an American lawyer, politician, government official, essayist, journalist, humorist, and inventor.

[2][6] 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.

When Thorn arrived in Washington, the Coast and Geodetic Survey had been caught up in the increased scrutiny of U.S. Government agencies by politicians seeking to reform governmental affairs by curbing the spoils system and patronage common among office holders of the time.

The commission looked into three main issues: the role of geodesy in the U.S. Government's scientific efforts and whether responsibility for inland geodetics should reside in the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey or the U.S. Geological Survey; whether the Coast and Geodetic Survey should be removed from the Department of the Treasury and placed under the control of the United States Department of the Navy, as it had been previously from 1834 to 1836; and whether weather services should reside in a military organization or in the civilian part of the government, raising the broader issue of whether U.S. government scientific agencies of all kinds should be under military or civilian control.

Chenoweth found that the Coast and Geodetic Survey had failed to account for government equipment it had purchased, continued to pay retired personnel as a way of giving them a pension even though the law did not provide for a pension system, paid employees whether they worked or not, and misused per diem money intended for the expenses of personnel in the field by paying per diem funds to employees who were not in the field as a way of augmenting their very low authorized wages and providing them with fair compensation.

[8] 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.

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.

[2] 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.

[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 Benjamin A. Colonna (1843-1925), who had performed extensive field work for the Survey before suffering severe injuries in an avalanche on Mount Olympus in Washington state in 1884, leaving him unable to walk without a cane and restricting him to office work.

With Thorn's emphasis on production of "a perfect map," the Coast and Geodetic Survey redoubled its cartographic efforts during his superintendency.

[21] 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.

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.

[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.

After Harrison took office, Thorn stayed on briefly pending the appointment and confirmation of his successor, physicist and meteorologist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall.

[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;[28] Coast and Geodetic Survey scientist Charles Peirce, for one, resigned in 1886, demoralized by Thorn's focus on what Peirce considered "red tape.

"[9] After leaving the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Thorn returned to his home in Orchard Park, New York, where he continued to operate his farm.

[2][30] 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.