Waltham
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Waltham. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city in Middlesex co., Mass.; on both sides of the Charles river, and on the Boston and Maine railroad; 10 miles W. of Boston. It contains a public library, the Leland Home for Aged Women, a hospital, Home for the Feeble-minded, waterworks, street railroad and electric light plants, National and savings banks, and several daily and weekly newspapers. The city is widely known for its manufacture of watches, for which there are several establishments, one of which is the largest watch factory in the world, in which watch making by machinery on an extensive scale was first attempted. Here also was built the first cotton mill in the United States where all the operations of cotton manufacture were conducted under one roof. The other industries include the manufacture of crayons, hosiery, brass goods, aeroplanes, bicycles, electric clocks, etc. Pop. (1910) 27,834; (1920) 30,915. WALTHER VON DER VOGEL-
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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.
American Watchmaker and Jeweler (1892)
In 1857 the company made an assignment, and the property, consisting of real estate, the factory, and numerous other building, machinery, steam engine, etc., was offered at public auction and was bid in for $56,500 by
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote in 1921 that Waltham held "the largest watch factory in the world," the Waltham Watch Company was near its peak; it faltered in the Depression, and watchmaking on the Charles ended in the 1950s when the company shut its factory for good. The mill complex survives as offices and housing, and the 1814 Boston Manufacturing Company building the entry calls "the first cotton mill in the United States where all the operations of cotton manufacture were conducted under one roof" is now a museum of industry. The city's economy since has rested on education and research rather than manufacturing: Brandeis University opened there in 1948, Bentley moved out from Boston in the 1960s, and Waltham sits on the Route 128 technology belt. Population has roughly doubled from the 30,915 Collier's recorded for 1920 to about 65,000 today.
Written for this edition, 2026.