Cambridge, city, Middlesex County, northeastern Massachusetts, on the Charles River, opposite Boston. Cambridge is a noted educational and research center; it is the seat of Harvard University (1636), the first college in North America, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Lesley College. Its printing and publishing industry dates from about 1640, when the first printing press in America was established here. Biotechnology and computer technology are also major industries. Manufactures include electronic equipment, scientific instruments, chemicals, and candy. The city's historic structures include the house George Washington used as headquarters after assuming command of the Continental Army here in 1775; it later became the home of the 19th-century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Among the many other notable 19th-century people who lived in Cambridge were the author-physician Oliver Wendell Holmes and the poet-diplomat James Russell Lowell. Other points of interest are Harvard Square; the many museums administered by Harvard University, housing one of the finest university art collections in the world; the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute, specializing in American women's history, and housing papers of Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Earhart, and others; Christ Church and the Old Burying Ground; and Harvard's Widener Library, which displays a Gutenberg Bible. Founded as New Towne in 1630, the city was the capital of Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1634. It was renamed in 1638 for Cambridge, England, and incorporated as a city in 1846. Completion in 1912 of a subway connection to Boston facilitated industrial growth. Population 95,322 (1980); 95,802 (1990); 101,355 (2000).
