In 1914 the company moved to Chester.

The A.H. Wirz Company manufactured tubes for toothpaste and ointments.  In more recent years it became a division of Teledyne and was known as Teledyn Wirz.  The business closed about 1999.

Article with pictures of some of the workers, machinery and products from The Delaware County Advocate, October 1940

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The following is a number of excerpts from a trade journal, American Perfumer & Aromatics, December, 1958 issue, entitled The Irrepressible Collapsible Metal Tube, by George A. Stauter. The article is a detailed history of the collapsible tube industry. I am including here only those references to the A. H. Wirz Company.
-Lee Bennington

The A. H. Wirz Company was founded in 1836 by August Herman Wirz who was a Philadelphia manufacturer of fine surgical instruments.

In 1870, Mr. Wirz went to Vienna as the U. S. Commissioner to the industrial exposition being held in that city. There he saw metal tubes being made on the newly-invented hydraulic press and visualized their commercial possibilities for products other than artists colors. The original patent on the collapsible tube was issued in 1841 to an American artist, John Goffe Rand, who was looking for a way to store a quantity of artist colors to avoid having to grind pigments every time he wanted to paint.

Mr. Wirz brought back plans for the machine from Vienna along with a German tool and die maker to build it and added tube making to his business. This phase of operations soon became so profitable that, by 1885, the manufacture of surgical instruments was discontinued. Wirz was the first to package a cosmetic preparation in a collapsible metal tube, a product known as Evans’ cucumber jelly. 

Then, in 1892, a Connecticut dentist had the idea of packaging the dentifrice that he produced into a collapsible tube. The container would be both convenient and sanitary. At that time toothpaste was packaged in porcelain jars. One simply dipped a toothbrush into the paste and took what was needed. So too, did other family members. Dr. Sheffield’s Crème Dentifrice in a collapsible tube was an immediate success. 

In 1914 the Wirz firm outgrew its quarters in downtown Philadelphia and moved to Chester, Pa. That same year H. S. (Zip) Darlington joined the company, beginning a 40-year tenure that was marked by his elevation to the presidency in 1929. Mr Darlington retired in 1954 and was succeeded by Mark K. Dresden who held the post until his resignation in September 1958. Robert F. Cox now heads the firm. 

During World War II, because of the ease with which this container can be handled, shipped and used under wartime conditions, the armed forces specified its use for many items. Among the most unusual requests were for tubes containing the chemicals for the detection of poison gases in small concentrations. After other types of packages failed, the Chemical Warfare Service turned to the collapsible squeeze tube industry, taking the problem to Wirz. The Chester firm devised a lead tube with an elongated neck and sealed by low temperature solder. At one time, Wirz produced 1,400 gross of these tubes per day and more than 100 million tubes during the war.

Hax, Charles (1882 - 1952 - ?) (Assistant foreman in 1952 at age 83.)

Hold, Thomas  (1924)