He is the President of Norton Associates[1] and the Milton P. Higgins II Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Mechanical Engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Post-retirement, he wrote general interest books and memoirs such as Confessions of a Workaholic and The Evolution of Engineering in the 20th Century.

Additional works include Cam Design: A Primer and A History of Point Connett in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts.

[13] During the academic year 1996–97, Norton spent the first half working with The Gillette Company's Engineering and Implementation Group.

In studies that received the Procter & Gamble Best Paper Award, he tested a number of eccentric and double-dwell cams with diverse manufacturing techniques on a Cam Dynamic Test Fixture, analyzing acceleration waveforms to identify significant differences between methods and revealing manufacturing techniques for achieving theoretical fidelity and quiet running,[16] as well as emphasizing the interaction with the chosen acceleration design.

In a study with Mahdi Agheli and Stephen S. Nestinger, he introduced a general and comprehensive closed-form solution for the reachable workspace of a 2-RPR planar parallel mechanism, enabling accurate and reliable analysis, and facilitating efficient design and optimization based on the mechanism's workspace.

[19] In another collaborative research, he examined the nonlinear interaction between lateral vibration and rotation of an elastically mounted unbalanced shaft, focusing on phenomena like the Sommerfeld effect and transient motions, finding the possibility of non-stationary behavior.

[21] In addition, he investigated sound propagation characteristics of materials, developing a methodology to compare metallic and non-metallic materials' acoustic responses under impact loading and applying the findings to redesign an impact stop for noise reduction in a manufacturing setting.