Grist and flour mills, furniture factories, carriage and wagon factories, tanneries and shoe factories, foundries producing farm equipment, and knitting mills were all becoming commonplace in the county by the 1850s, but the real revolution in manufacturing activity came in the 1860s, with the arrival of cheese factories. It is accepted that the first cheese factories in Canada were established in Oxford County, although there is still some controversy about which one was the very first. Officially the title is given to Harvey Farrington for a factory in Norwich township opened in 1864, but it is likely his was preceded by the factory operated by Andes Smith in the same township. To display his accomplishments, Smith manufactured a 4,000 pound cheese, believed to have been the biggest ever made, which was exhibited at the New York State Fair in Utica and then the Provincial Exhibition in Toronto in 1865, but the fate of that monster foretold Smith's doom. In the course of hauling it from the exhibition grounds to the railway station for shipment to England for exhibition and sale, a wheel came off the wagon and the cheese was overturned and broke apart. Smith went bankrupt the following year, and fame passed to Harvey Farrington who had built a co-op factory at which risk was shared.