Before there was the Rte. 128 technology corridor ...

... There were the rivers of New England, which served as the launching pad for America's first forays into industrial production. This is the old Waltham Watch factory, located on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. Construction on the facility started in the early 1850s. Upriver and downriver there are dozens of other old factory buildings that were built to take advantage of the Charles to generate power, use water for production purposes, or dump waste material. By the time I was a kid, the factories had all closed and the river and environs were extremely polluted. Cleanup began in earnest in the 1970s, and in the 1990s local governments and the state had built a wonderful walking trail, that stretches from Comm. Ave in Newton all the way down through Waltham and Watertown and down to Cambridge and Boston. Meanwhile, the old red brick buildings have mostly been converted to other uses (the old Waltham Watch factory now houses office space and a restaurant, and I believe there's been talk of building condos or apartments).

I find it interesting that just a few miles from this site lie the gleaming office buildings where Microsoft, Oracle, and many other technology firms have set up shop on the banks of Rte. 128. Why did the computer and industrial revolutions concentrate in adjacent areas, 125 years apart? In my mind, the commonality is people -- both movements required brainpower and workers to get started, and nearby cities and towns provided both, thanks to the concentration of universities, transportation links, and large immigrant communities.