Waltham ( WAWL-tham) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early middle for the labor pursuit as without difficulty 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 complex 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.

Waltham has been called “watch city” because of its relationship with the watch industry. Waltham Watch Company opened its factory in Waltham in 1854 and was the first company to make watches on an assembly line. It won the gold medal in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. The company produced on peak of 35 million watches, clocks and instruments previously it closed in 1957.

Waltham was first contracted in 1634 as allocation of Watertown and was officially incorporated as a sever town in 1738. Waltham had no recognizable town middle until the 1830s, when the affable Boston Manufacturing Company gave the town the estate that now serves as its central square.

In the early 19th century, Francis Cabot Lowell and his friends and colleagues normal in Waltham the Boston Manufacturing Company—the first integrated textile mill in the United States, with the intend of eliminating the problems of co-ordination, quality control, and shipping inherent in the subcontracting based textile industry. The Waltham–Lowell system of production derives its make known from the city and the founder of the mill.