The Waltham Museum is just a few minutes' walk from Main Street, but upon entering the brick building, you are transported to another era. You will find artifacts from earlier domestic life-a grand baby carriage and a clothes wringer. There, you can glimpse the tiny gleaming parts from a genuine Waltham Watch Company clock and a magnificent Waltham creation, the "Oriten"- a bicycle built for 10. There, you can imagine a time in which Waltham's streets weren't filled with restaurants but instead with foundries and factories. The Waltham Museum is a non-profit corporation established in 1971. Each room in the museum is devoted to different eras of Waltham's history.

The first room illustrates the early history of Waltham. Long before John Winthrop and his men explored the region, the Quinobequin had been living along the Crooked River,which is currently known to us as the Charles. The Englishmen settled and transformed the land. Meanwhile, the stone points of the Quinobequin were discarded and lodged in the soil. These points have since been unearthed and are on display at the Waltham Museum.

Walking through the rooms, you see the growth of industry in Waltham. Paper mills gave way to to textile mills. The Boston Manufacturing Company, established by Francis Cabot Lowell in 1813 on present-day Moody Street, helped to establish Waltham as "the birthplace of the American innovation," said Wayne McCarthy, co-president of the Waltham Historical Society.

Lowell introduced a new textile production system called the Waltham-Lowell System.

McCarthy describes the mill as the "prototype" for a new, integrated approach to manufacturing in which spinning, weaving and other textile-making processes are carried out under one roof.

Not only did Lowell establish a new production system, but he also fostered a new kind of relationship with his workers, according to Sheila FitzPatrick, co-president of the Waltham Historical Society.

"Waltham never became a company town," says FitzPatrick. Employees were paid for the first time in United States currency, instead of to credit at the company store. For this, she called Lowell a "benevolent capitalist."

"[Lowell and the mill supervisors] wanted their workers to be treated with integrity: They made schools available to them, they provided to the community in other ways. ... They had a lecture series to inform the public," McCarthy said.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous innovations came out of Waltham, including chalk crayons, kerosene and power steering.

Waltham is perhaps most well-known as the home of the Waltham Watch Company.

"If you don't think Waltham is important in the world, . you will find that people know the name Waltham Watch," said FitzPatrick. In fact, an 1867 New York Times article mused that if you ask a neighbor for the time, "The watch he pulls out in reply is labeled, not 'Geneva,' nor 'Liverpool,' nor 'Versailles,' but '"Waltham, Massachusetts.'" Waltham soon earned the title of "Watch City."

The Waltham Watch Company invented precision machines capable of manufacturing delicate interchangeable parts that were vulnerable to corrosion in many climates but not in Waltham. "The clarity, the clear air, brought the Waltham Watch Company to Waltham," McCarthy said.

The clear air has long made Waltham an attractive community in which to live. Situated a convenient 10 miles from Boston, wealthy Bostonians often built their summer homes here. Several of those homes still stand today. These include the Lyman Estate, constructed in 1793, and Gore Place, the home of U.S. Senator and Massachusetts Governor Chistopher Gore in 1806.

A third summer home, called Stonehurst, was built in 1883 by social reformer and housing advocate Robert Treat Paine. Paine commissioned a home by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead. It is now a National Historic Landmark and the only example of Richardson's country home architecture that is open to the public as a museum.

Just a short drive beyond the bustle of Main Street, you will find Stonehurst situated on 109 acres of quiet, forested land known as the Storer Conservation Lands. The grounds are maintained by the City of Waltham. There, winding paths weave throughout red maple and white oak trees.

The home stands in harmony with its surroundings-wooden shingles and uncut glacial boulders cover its facade.

"Stonehurst is part of that continuing history of Waltham as a place of respite, a way to escape the city," Ann Clifford, Stonehurst's curator said.

Paine was concerned with the affects of the Industrial Revolution on daily life, and this led to a new conception of the American country home.

"He [Paine] was a philanthropist, and he visited a lot of derelict buildings in Boston. He saw how unhealthy living conditions affected the health of Boston. ... His own home here . [has] got tons of space, windows in all directions, transoms and screens to allow the breezes to flow through the building. In the late 19th century, people were realizing that smoke and congestion were affecting human health and the human mindset, and this place was created as an escape from all that-humans need nature," Clifford said.

This city has been shaped by the ideas of entrepreneurs and intellectuals. McCarthy said, "Waltham . never looks back, it is always looking forward. We've got entrepreneurs and adventure capitalists. It's almost as though as [entrepreneurs] establish something as a prototype, as an incubator, and then when they're successful, they look for the resources to move forward."

Waltham may not look back, but many Waltham residents feel compelled to look back at the city's rich history. Philip Ripley has volunteered at the Waltham Museum for four years.

"Every city needs a museum, and I like to do my part to help out. It helps us know what passed . by revealing what our forefathers did," he said.

Two other museum volunteers, Peg Nix and Kaye MacLellan, grew up as neighbors in Waltham.

"Kaye and I are twins, but we have different parents," Nix joked.

For Nix, history is "remembering the old times." McCarthy is surprised by the amount of historical material there is to study.

"It's baffling; I am absolutely amazed by how much I learn. I almost learn something new every day," he said.

For FitzPatrick, understanding the past is necessary for the future.

"If you don't know where you came from, you won't know where you're going, and that's why the same problems keep cropping up and get beaten down over and over again."

She urges others to learn about the history of Waltham.

"Join the Waltham History Society, number one. Number two, read! Read, and listen, and learn, and analyze.