Mill Talk: The Ingenious Machinist Paul Moody

The Ingenious Machinist Paul Moody
His Waltham Years

A talk by Tony Connors, Ph.D.
Historian and Author

Our Museum is on the site of America's first integrated factory, where raw materials—cotton, in this case—were converted into a finished product—whole cloth—all under one roof. It was here, on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts—at the corner of the river and what we know as Moody Street—that the Boston Manufacturing Company became the first successful industrial corporation in America, effectively launching the American Industrial Revolution. 

The power loom, developed by Paul Moody, is America's original high tech. It was the crucial centerpiece of the system of mass production conceived by Francis Cabot Lowell and launched in 1814. It is Paul Moody after whom the iconic Moody Street is named, and where the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill complex, now a National Historic Landmark, still stands. 

Tony Connors, author of the dual biography of Paul Moody and machinist David Wilkinson entitled "Ingenious Machinists," will illuminate for us what he feels is the incomparable importance of machinists in early America, and especially what were Paul Moody's most important professional years, those he spent in Waltham. For although Moody was a major contributor to the establishment later in the 19th Century of the mills on the Merrimack River just a bit further north in what we now know as Lowell, Massachusetts, Mr. Connors makes the case that most of the important inventions and innovations that made them possible were conceived and developed in Waltham.

Come learn about the namesake of Waltham's iconic Moody Street and his crucial role in launching the American Industrial Revolution. 

Doors open at 6:30pm. The talk begins at 7:00pm.