Waltham

a city of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, situated on the Charles River ten miles west of Boston. Population, about 30,000. The city is noted chiefly for manufactures, particularly for watch-making. The American Waltham Watch Works is the largest watch factory in the world. The manufacture of interchangeable parts began here. There are about 150 different parts of a watch. Under the old hand system each part was made for a particular watch. Under the system originated at Waltham each part is turned out in quantity. Delicate machinery is employed, so that all the pieces of a kind are identical in size and shape. Each piece will fit any one of, it may be, several thousand timekeepers.