Early industrial activities included an abandoned mining company, founded in 1754. In the 1760s, ten mills – five sawmills, four grist mills, one fulling mill – were founded in the area of West and Pleasant Streets.
As waterways were dammed to build mills, textiles and its machinery manufacturing soon followed, with the country’s first piece of corduroy woven in Worcester in April 1780. The subsequent decades demanded improved transportation methods for the blossoming manufacturing industry, with said demands realized by the 1830s; 1828 brought to Worcester the opening of the Blackstone Canal, connecting Worcester to Providence; 1835, the newly constructed Boston & Worcester Railroad.
Worcester Historical Museum
Throughout its years, Worcester has seen innumerable businesses develop, thrive, and inspire others to follow suit. Daniel Denny opened a card-manufacturing factory by 1798, with numerous card factories opening soon thereafter. With their carding machines in hand, manufacturers were able to refine cotton and wool fibers into yarns suitable for textile production. The Stowell brothers – Peter and Ebenezer – invented looms for weaving carpets with novel patterns, setting up shop in 1804. William Hovey’s shearing machine of 1811 transformed one’s ability to cut fabric by a purported ten-fold. Invention begat invention, such as George Crompton’s award-winning loom designs of 1867, and industry blossomed not only in the textiles and its machinery sector, but in all sectors.
Consider the wire industry. Goddard’s 1831 wire business became the largest of its kind in this country. Washburn’s inventions and 1835 move to Stephen Salisbury’s hydro-powered facilities spurred Worcester’s wire manufacturing into unparalleled productivity. With success comes the flexibility to invent, and invent they did. Washburn, in partnership with his son-in-law Philip L. Moen, created Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company and exclusively produced a fine, patented wire for telegraph companies; an estimated 350,000 miles of telegraph wire crisscrossed the U.S. by 1880. The company was also known for producing barbed wire, which enabled Western farmers to create large-scale cattle operations.
An industrial incubator, Worcester is also proud to lay claim to be the home of several inventions and “firsts,” from the practical to the whimsical. We have the monkey wrench (Loring Coes and Aury Coes, 1841); the first “practical’ typewriter (Charles Thurber, 1843): the calliope, a steam-powered musical instrument (Joshua Stoddard, 1855); the first hair clipper (George Henry Coates, 1876); candlepin bowling (Justin White, 1880); shredded wheat (Henry Perky, 1892); and one of the first street sprinklers (George T. Aitchison, 1895).
Robert Goddard executed his first successful rocket launch in 1926; Frank A. Fiorillo was the first to market a packaged pizza mix in 1952; the first pressurized and anti-gravity space suits issued from the David Clark Company in the 1950s; the first FDA-approved birth control pill came from the laboratory of Drs. Gregory Pincus and Min-Chueh Chang in1957; Harvey Ball drew the iconic Smiley face in 1963; and many more.
The creative energy in the community was infectious – Worcester saw the invention and establishment of products and manufacturing at a pace that has yet to let up. From Samuel Andrews’ tannery established in the early 1700s to the tech and startup incubators currently popping up, Worcester has served as, and remains, a leader in how to make a living.
