German immigrant Max Ams operated a highly successful fruit and vegetable canning and exporting business in New York City. The Max Ams Machine Co. was a spin-off business that manufactured machinery for the canning industry, which included toggle presses that were also used for general metalworking.
In 1910 Paul R. Hahnemann—who had co-founded press maker Zeh & Hahnemann Co. only four years earlier—was living in Mount Vernon and working for Max Ams Machine Co., and was granted a patent for a toggle draw press; the patent was assigned to the Max Ams Machine Co.
Information Sources
- From a website on Manhattan buildings.
Born in Baden, Germany in 1844, Max Ams came to New York in 1866. Two years later he organized a fruit canning and packing firm, the Max Ams Preserving Company. By the early 1880's he was highly successful and operated what J. P. Zavalla in his 1916 The Canning of Fruits and Vegetables called "a very large export business of American food products."
- A search for patents assigned to this firm turns up 105 patents, the great majority of which are for machinery specialized for making, filling and sealing cans.