This company made woodworking machinery in their early years, including a sash sticker and a lathe. Their main products included jeweler's lathes, wire drawing machinery, bench shears, rod cutters, rolling mills (single, double and triple geared types), drop presses, bench drills, plating dynamos, ring stretchers and benders and mandrels.

Ad from December 1903 "Modern Machinery"

The company was active from 1882 (or earlier) until 1980. In 1957 or '58 a descendant of William W. Oliver, perhaps the son, sold the business; by that time the lathe line had been discontinued. The purchaser, A. J. Frank Neal, continued making the rolling mills until about 1980.

There are several "Oliver" manufacturers that are often confused with one another. W. W. Oliver Manufacturing Company, of Buffalo, NY, is discussed here. The much larger Oliver Machinery Co. of Grand Rapids, MI, made a full line of woodworking machinery, and later on made bread slicing machines. Oliver Instrument Company of Adrian, MI, made die filers and drill sharpeners. Oliver Farm Equipment Corporation, later Oliver Corp., made the well-known Oliver tractors. Finally, there was the Oliver Woodworking Machinery Company of Manchester, England, a subsidiary of the Oliver Machinery Company. The English operation sold machines that were developed for the British and European market, and were quite different from their American counterparts.

Information Sources

• Another source of information is Tony Griffiths' lathes.co.uk page on W. W. Oliver
• The earliest evidence for this company that we have found is an 1882 patent granted to Claes A. Svensson and assigned to William W. Oliver, for a machine for bending finger rings from solid bar stock.
• From the 1884 Buffalo City Directory: "Oliver, William W. manfr. jeweler's machinery, 430 to 438 Niagara, h. 86 York." Also listed is "Svensson, Claes A. foreman, w. W. W. Oliver, h. 21 Huron." William W. Oliver was also listed as a maker of die sinkers.
• Correspondent Benjamin D. Gradler reports a book from 1898 with an ad from this company: "The W. W. Oliver Manufacturing Co. 1488 Niagara Street, Buffalo, N. Y. U. S. A."
• The 1899 book, History of the Great Lakes, Vol. 2 by J. B. Mansfield, notes that one Joseph Day, Jr., was hired by W. W. Oliver on Niagara street in 1892, and was still employed there in 1899.
• A 1911 edition of the periodical Commercial America lists "W. W. Oliver Mfg. Co. 1484 Niagara St., Buffalo. Jeweler's tools and electric motor polishing heads." Several later works give their address as 1483 Niagara St.
• We have two independent reports of W. W. Oliver wire drawing benches, reported by Ray Hughes and Benjamin Gradler. We have photos of one of the examples, and it is marked, "PAT. APL'D FOR / W.W.OLIVER / BUFFALO.N.Y. / No. 2941". The machine has a pair of rollers, each with nine graduated grooves for drawing wire successively thinner.
• A discussion on the Practical Machinist forum describes the later history of the company.
• A correspondent, Frank Neal, followed up by email to the above-mentioned Practical Machinist discussion:

  My father's name was J. A. Frank Neal. The address for W. W. Oliver Mfg. Co. was 1483 Niagara St. I believe the 1484 Niagara St. was a typographical error. When I helped my father with moving the business in 1957 or 1958, 1483 Niagara St. was a two story brick building with the S. A. Day Co. on the ground floor and the W. W. Oliver Mfg. Co. on the second floor. I specifically remember walking into the production area of S. A. Day Co. and past mixing vats with some chemical being mixed and then we went to an old freight elevator to ascend to the production floor of the Oliver Co. I can only assume that the S. A. Day Co. moved next door to 1489 Niagara St. which is a three story building at some later date to give themselves more room. I also assume that the old 1483 Niagara St. location was torn down at some point in time.