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united interests pursued with a common purpose contribute to the prosperity of the whole community.
A few months after the establishment of the Association, at the suggestion of Mr. Oel Farnsworth, a committee was appointed to consider the subject of holding an agricultural and mechanical exhibition of the products and manufactures of the town.
This exhibition was held September 24th-27th following, and was successful in the highest degree.
Among the notable articles exhibited were the fabrics of the Boston Manufacturing Company; the colored and white crayons, a special article of manufacture, invented by Mr. F. Field, which Waltham controlled; the blow-pipe and retort of the Newton Chemical Company; the occultator, an instrument for calculating solar and other eclipses, invented by Thomas Hill, in 1842, while in Harvard College; the arithometer, a machine for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing; and the electrotyping process invented by the same well known genius.
The cattle, agricultural, and dairy products exhibited were of the first class; and numerous diplomas were awarded.
Other fairs have been held in succeeding years under the auspices of the ‘Farmers' Club,’ but none have surpassed the ‘Industrial Exhibition’ in extent and excellence.
The whole number of manufacturing establishments in the town, as reported in 1877, was eight. Three employed twenty-one persons and upward, and these three in all gave employment to 1949 persons.
The other five employed sixty-nine persons.
The water-works, established six years ago, upon the bank of the Charles River, near Mt. Feake, give an unfailing supply of pure water, not drawn, as was expected and intended, from the river by filtration, but from springs in the bottom of the reservoir.
This sketch can be closed in no more fitting words than those used by a distinguished son of the town describing the general view from its most prominent point, ‘Prospect Hill:’1
1 An eminence N. W. of the village, elevated 482 feet above the level of the sea, used as one of the stations in the trigonometrical survey of the State conducted in 1831-42. In a recent discussion in the Free Press it is claimed that the White Mountains are not included in the ranges visible from ‘Prospect Hill.’
Thomas Lewis, Landscape Photographs, 1879.
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