In The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee and the Engineers Who Created Them, local historian Thomas H. Fehring makes a tall claim, comparing the Cream City of a century ago to the Silicon Valley of nowadays. Back then Milwaukee was known as “the Machine Shop of the World.” It was the site of heavy industry that kept America’s pistons pumping; its big companies conducted research that spurred innovation in the Industrial Age. Maybe the claim isn’t entirely farfetched?
Fehring arranges his book in a manner appealing to longtime Milwaukeeans: by neighborhoods first and then by the factories they contained. The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee covers roughly 1860 through 1960 and offers detailed chronicles of the city’s manufacturing companies, the products they produced and the (mostly) men that ran them. Familiar names abound, including Allen-Bradley, Briggs & Stratton, Johnson Controls, alongside lesser-known enterprises. Who knew that Milwaukee’s Joseph Zimmerman developed the first telephone answering machine, an 80-pound behemoth, in the late 1940s?
Fehring will be part of an author event dubbed “History for the Holidays,” 10 a.m.-noon on Saturday, Dec. 9, at Milwaukee County Historical Society, 910 N. Old World Third St.
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