Toledo Scale Model 4031

I found this lovely old Toledo Scale on display at a local restaurant, one of those industrial sculpture things we took for granted in butcher shops and grocery shops all our lives. What struck me was the prominently displayed Made in Canada badge.
 Toledo Scale opened its first Canadian operation in 1910 and expanded into a new factory on Howard Avenue in Windsor in 1921. The plant produced the full line, from small scales for the food and retail markets through to large drive-on scales. During the 1960s business was good and at one time more that 300 people were employed making scales. Change came when Reliance Electric acquired the business. The factory was closed in the mid eighties and the property sold in 1989. The buildings were demolished in 2001-03.

As for the U.S. parent company, Henry Theobald founded Toledo Scale in 1901, based on the invention of Allen DeVilbiss, Jr. who had devised an automatic computing pendulum scale but was uninterested in commercializing his invention. 
Theobald coined the phrase, "No Springs, Honest Weight" as a slogan for the new company and Toledo Scale became a leader in the field.  He passed away in 1924 but the company continued to innovate and grow, devising, in the 1930s a variation of bakelite named Plaskon for scale components, a scale for wind tunnels and developing the first solid state scale in the '60s. 
In 1967 Toledo Scale was acquired by Reliance Electric of Cleveland Ohio. Reliance closed the Toledo plant in 1984, splitting the work up between the plants at Windsor and Spartansburg NC. Soon after that the Canadian plant was closed 
Also in 1989, Reliance Electric sold the Toledo Scale division to Ciba-Geigy AG. The division was then merged with Mettler Instruments.