E.H. Wachs

Founded in Chicago in 1883, the E.H. Wachs company has a history that dates back more than 120 years. The story of this company is really an account of the various personalities and abilities of its owners during those ye......Founded in Chicago in 1883, the E.H. Wachs company has a history that dates back more than 120 years. The story of this company is really an account of the various personalities and abilities of its owners during those years and continuing its development today. At the age of 14, Edward Wachs emigrated from Germany to Springfield, Ohio. Here, he was apprenticed as a machinist in the shops of James Leffel & Company. After a number of years in that area, he moved to Chicago and became associated with the Taylor & Wachs Chain Company (now the Taylor Chain Company), a hand-forging operation to manufacture chain. In 1883, the partnership of Taylor and Wachs was severed, and that same year, Edward Wachs founded the E.H. Wachs Company. At that time, a major prime mover for any business had to be either waterpower or steam power. Because metropolitan areas such as Chicago used steam as the major prime mover, the E.H. Wachs company focused its efforts there. The Company did steam fitting and general millwork in connection with the establishment of boiler plants and piping to run steam engines. After several years of steam fitting and millwork, the Company started the manufacture of the Wachs Vertical Steam Engine. This was a single cylinder, double-acting, vertical engine, which was manufactured in a range of sizes from 1 HP to 60 HP. The steam engine business grew, and in 1888, Charles Wachs joined the Company as Plant Manager. Charles Wachs was the eldest of Edward Wachs’s six sons and had apprenticed as a machinist at the Milwaukee plant of Filer & Stowell Company. Prior to his apprenticeship, he had studied engineering at Armor Tech in Chicago. By the time Charles Wachs joined, the Wachs Company owned a two-story manufacturing plant in Chicago at the southwest corner of LaSalle and Grand Avenues. The line shafts in this plant were driven by a steam engine, located in the basement.