Historical information

A Large Rare mid 19th Century Balance Scale (also called a Beam Scale) Made in England by W&T Avery a British manufacturer of weighing machines. The company was founded in the early 18th century and took the name W & T Avery in 1818. The undocumented origin of the company goes back to 1730 when James Ford established the business in the town of Digbeth. On Joseph Balden the then company’s owner’s death in 1813 William and Thomas Avery took over his scale making business and in 1818 renamed it W & T Avery.
The business rapidly expanded and in 1885 they owned three factories: the Atlas Works in West Bromwich, the Mill Lane Works in Birmingham and the Moat Lane Works in Digbeth. In 1891 the business became a limited company with a board of directors and in 1894 the shares were quoted on the London Stock Exchange. In 1895 the company bought the legendary Soho Foundry in Smethwick, a former steam engine factory owned by James Watt & Co. In 1897 the move was complete and the steam engine business was gradually converted to pure manufacture of weighing machines. The turn of the century was marked by managing director William Hipkins who was determined to broadening the renown of the Avery brand and transforming the business into a specialist manufacture of weighing machines.
By 1914 the company occupied an area of 32,000m² and had some 3000 employees. In the inter-war period the growth continued with the addition of specialized shops for cast parts, enamel paints and weighbridge assembly and the product range diversified into counting machines, testing machines, automatic packing machines and petrol pumps. During the second world war the company also produced various types of heavy guns. At that time the site underwent severe damage from parachute mines and incendiary bombs.Then from 1931 to 1973 the company occupied the 18th-century Middlesex Sessions House in Clerkenwell as its headquarters. Changes in weighing machine technology after World War II led to the closure of the foundry, the introduction of electronic weighing with the simultaneous gradual disappearance of purely mechanical devices. The continued expansion was partly achieved through a series of acquisitions of other companies. After almost a century of national and international expansion the company was taken over by GEC in 1979. Keith Hodgkinson, managing director at the time, completed the turn-around from mechanical to electronic weighing with a complete overhaul of the product range of retail scales and industrial platform scales. In 1993 GEC took over the Dutch-based company Berkel and the Avery-Berkel name was introduced. In 2000 the business was in turn acquired by the US-American company Weigh-Tronix, who already owned Salter, and is today operating as Avery Weigh-Tronix.

Item made and used possibly around the 1850s by Victorian colonial government to check weights of goods being sold by early shop keepers on the gold fields item is very rare.James McEwan & Co were the retailers of W & T Avery scales in Victoria from 1852.

Significance

A very rare item used probably to check weights used by merchants during colonial times by government inspectors in Victoria. A similar example exist in a NSW museum, the item is believed to have been made before W & T Avery expansion to the Soho foundry in Birmingham in 1885 and after 1818.

Physical description

Beam balance scale suspended from a wooden tripod, with metal trays suspended by three chain lengths.

Inscriptions & markings

embossed on the balance beam W T Avery, Birmingham,