BIO:  Oliver J. Bollinger, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Abby Bowman

Copyright 2004.  All rights reserved.
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, historical editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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Part II, Biographical Sketches, York Borough, Pg 8

OLIVER J. BOLLINGER, whose portrait appears in this work, is a well-known 
inventor and manufacturer of turbine water-wheels and mill machinery.  He was 
born in Adams County, Penn., April 13, 1827, and is the only child of Matthias 
and Elizabeth (Eckert) Bollinger, and of German lineage.  His father was a 
native of Carroll County, Md., born in 1801.  He became a resident of York 
County in 1838, settling in Codorus Township, where he resided until his death, 
in 1879.  He was a millwright by trade, and was actively engaged in that branch 
of industry for over forty years.  Our subject's early life was passed upon a 
farm, receiving his education in the common schools, the White Hall Academy and 
the Pennsylvania Commercial Institute.  His father being a millwright, at the 
age of eighteen he left the farm and apprenticed himself to the millwright 
trade, under his father, where he remained several years, acquiring a thorough 
knowledge of the business, and finally succeeded his father, who, retiring, left 
the entire control to his son.  Mr. Bollinger has continued the business 
successfully since then, a period of forty years, and is to-day probably the 
oldest and best known, as he is certainly the best qualified.  It is but natural 
to one who dates his knowledge of mills and machinery from infancy, and his 
attempts at mill construction from the jack-knife, the shingle and the country 
stream or roadside brook, where his childish ambition reveled in its fancied 
great accomplishment of his efforts.  In 1860 he took up the manufacture of the 
Jonval turbine water-wheel, but an experience of several years demonstrated 
clearly to him that improvements were not only desirable, but necessary, and 
after a long period of experiments and attempts at different constructions, he, 
in June, 1870, patented and gave to the trade the old Bollinger turbine water-
wheel, sometimes styled the "Success."  Though he afterward disposed of the 
right and title to manufacture that wheel, it was destined for him to perfect 
another, styled "Bollinger's new turbine water-wheel," June 1, 1875, and to this 
new wheel he is devoting his time and attention, offering the same to the public 
with elaborate explanation by catalog and circular.  To his manufacture of 
water-wheels he adds mill machinery, and we particularly call the attention of 
those interested, to his inventions of mill-stone supports and driving devices, 
which reflect much credit upon the inventor and give the trade articles of 
sterling value.  In 1874 Mr. Bollinger became one of the members of the York 
Manufacturing Company, then just started, and took position in the firm as 
mechanical engineer and foreman of the shops.  He remained there for two years, 
when, realizing the value of his new wheel, he began devoting all his time to 
it, and so he continues to-day.

It can be said, in brief, that the new Bollinger turbine water-wheel, patented 
June 1, 1875, is the result and embodiment of the inventor's valuable experience 
of about thirty-five years in the designing and construction of water-wheels and 
mill machinery, and that in this turbine, good and well-tried features have been 
preserved, while register gates, pivot or claptrap gates, cams, eccentrics, 
racks and pinions under water, worm-gears, windlasses, and all such trappy and 
complicated devices which have heretofore rendered turbine wheels troublesome, 
impracticable and worthless, have been dispensed with, and substituted by new 
and substantial improvements, protected by letters of patent.  All wheels and 
machinery are built under the immediate supervision of the inventor, who invites 
the special attention of wheel builders and wheel buyers.

Mr. Bollinger has for sixteen years been a resident of York, and has added much 
to its progressive business interests.  He belongs to that class of men who, 
active and fertile in mechanical and inventive resources, have done much to give 
life and reality to the ideas which emanate only from men of natural inborn 
mechanical attributes.  In 1856 he was united in marriage with Susan C. Fife, a 
native of York County and daughter of John and Elizabeth Fife.  To this marriage 
were born three children.  Mrs. Bollinger died in 1883, at forty-five years of 
age.  For twenty-five years Mr. Bollinger has been a member of the Evangelical 
Lutheran Church.  Politically he is a Republican, and has served as a member of 
the borough council.  Affable and of a kindly nature, warm in his friendships 
and sincere in his attachments, he is regarded as a good citizen, alive to all 
matters pertaining to his city's welfare, a reliable, straightforward business 
and moral man.