and eight years later grew to an estimated 15,000 fl. In 1850, Johann Matthäus Voith was summoned to serve on the town council and, in 1855, along with nine other Heidenheim entrepreneurs, he received a grant to attend the international exhibition in Paris.

After 1850, the company which, like other Heidenheim-based metal workshops, had specialized in repairs, began to replicate various machines imported from England. The workshop produced whatever the customers ordered. The transition from a small metalworking shop to a machine