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Concept
Birdsill Holly
Summary
Birdsill Holly Jr. (November 8, 1820 – April 27, 1894) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor of water hydraulics devices. He is known for inventing mechanical devices that improved city water systems and patented an improved fire hydrant that is similar to those used currently for firefighting. Holly was a co-inventor of the Silsby steam fire engine. He founded the Holly Manufacturing Company that developed into the larger Holly Steam Combination Company that distributed heat from a central station and developed commercial district heating for cities in the United States and Canada.
Birdsill Holly Jr. was born on November 8, 1820 in Auburn, New York. His father was Birdsill Holly, Sr. and his mother was Comfort (Parker) Holly. When Holly was born his father moved the family to Auburn to join the crew constructing the new prison facility. When the prison was completed, Birdsill Sr. found a job at the Auburn Theological Seminary in construction, after which he tried to farm without much success. The family moved to Seneca Falls, New York, where there was a water-powered industry with many jobs. Holly grew up in the Seneca Falls, New York, area since his father was able to find work as a millwright and general mechanic.
Holly was forced to drop out of school at the age of eight when his father died prematurely at the age of 37; he was only in the third grade before he had to start supporting his family. He was influenced by his father and took an interest in similar trade skills of mechanical engineering. Holly started an apprenticeship in a cabinetry before he trained as a mechanic. In his late teens Holly became a superintendent in the machine trade and later became an owner of a machine shop in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Holly divorced his wife Elizabeth sometime before 1870 and married his adopted daughter Sophia, twenty-eight years his junior. In a Master's thesis published in 1996, The Life And Times Of Birdsill Holly, Madelynn Frederickson writes that the Lockport society shunned the couple, who moved away temporarily in hopes that the scandal would be forgotten.
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