The A.W. Faber company celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1861. By then it had 250 employees and had cornered a significant share of the market. Lothar Faber, ever innovative, was looking for possibilities to diversify his business and came across a slate quarry a dozen miles west of the town of Hof in north Bavaria. In that centenary year he set up a factory for making school slates in the village of Geroldsgrün, providing employment for many people. Later this produced some world-famous slide rules.