Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning, spawning what became known as the Waltham-Lowell system of labor and production. The city is now a center for research and higher education, home to Brandeis University and Bentley University as well as industrial powerhouse Raytheon Technologies. The population was 65,218 at the census in 2020.
City Hall
Boston Manufacturing Company
Waltham, 1793
The Charles River in Waltham
Technological and industrial history of the United States
The technological and industrial history of the United States describes the emergence of the United States as one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. The availability of land and literate labor, the absence of a landed aristocracy, the prestige of entrepreneurship, the diversity of climate and large easily accessed upscale and literate markets all contributed to America's rapid industrialization.
The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney, revolutionized slave-based agriculture in the Southern United States
Monks Mound, a large structure built by the indigenous peoples in present-day Madison County, Illinois
Allentown, Pennsylvania, one of several centers of 18th and 19th century American industrialization
Francis Cabot Lowell, whose Boston Manufacturing Company helped revolutionize American factories
