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Billed by the Chamber of Commerce as the "Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution", and an early center for the Labor Movement,
is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for much 19th century industrial city planning. The city is now a center for research and higher education. The population was 59,226 at the 2000 census. The name
because of its association with the watch industry. This is due to Waltham Watch Company, which opened its factory in Waltham in 1854. It was the first company to make watches on an assembly line. It won the gold medal in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Over 40 million watches, clocks and instruments were produced by Waltham Watch Company until it closed in 1957.
Waltham was first settled in 1634 as part of Watertown and was officially incorporated as a separate town in 1738.
In the early 19th century, Francis Cabot Lowell and his friends and colleagues established in Waltham the Boston Manufacturing Company - the first integrated textile mill in the United States.
The city is home to Gore Place, a mansion built in 1806 for former Massachusetts Governor Christopher Gore; The Robert Treat Paine Estate, a residence designed in collaboration between architect Henry Hobson Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted for philanthropist Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (1810-1905); and the Lyman Estate, a estate established in 1793 by Boston merchant Theodore Lyman.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Waltham was home to the brass era automobile manufacturer Metz, where among other things the first American production motorcycle was built.