Walter Oertli

Walter Oertli (born March 29, 1901 , † December 23, 1980 ) was a Swiss industrialist .

Life

He had studied mechanical engineering and in 1929, together with his brother Trautgott, founded T. und Ing.W. Oertli AG for the sale of car paints.

In 1930 the American manufacturer of oil burners May Oil Burner Corporation from Baltimore , whose Quiet May oil burners had already been successfully introduced in France and the Netherlands , looked for an agency in Switzerland, and Oertli signed his first 12-month contract. At that time, a complete system cost over CHF 4,000, with average hourly wages of CHF 1.50. In May 1931 he had installed an oil heating system for the Swiss Guard. These first burners were ignited manually with a fuse. At the end of 1932 they had sold around a hundred systems and hired five fitters. His service cars have been painted red since 1932. Traugott also founded Tech AG in 1933 .

When import quotas were imposed in Switzerland in 1934 , he began producing his own burners under license. He rented a room on Merkurstrasse in Hottingen (City of Zurich) and looked for local suppliers for pumps, motors, ignition transformers and cast housings.

In 1935 the price of oil had risen dramatically and the brothers began to license an automatic small coal burner TOWO (their initials), which he discovered in Belgium and which enabled savings of 35% compared to manually fired stoves.

During this time they also took over the general agency for Quiet May burners throughout Europe. After he had discovered the prototype of a steel boiler with integrated domestic water heating in Baltimore , he designed a similar one in Switzerland, also for coal operation, and from 1939 sold a small series.

At the end of July 1939, Traugott left the company, bought a factory in Murten , founded the SAIA SA company and developed a household machine, the Turmix mixer , from 1944–47 .

Walter continued the business as Ing. W. Oertli AG with ten employees. During the Second World War , sales collapsed due to fuel rationing. During this time he rebuilt the burner in such a way that he could do without parts from America entirely. After the war, the low oil price led to a boom in oil-firing systems. In 1946 his workforce had increased to 70 and the company moved to Beustweg 12 in Zurich. He began developing oil burners for industrial combustion systems and installed the first 2.5 MW burner in Einsiedeln Abbey .

To avoid deflagration, the oil supply must be immediately interrupted if the flame goes out. For this purpose, he developed a selenium photocell relay that reacts to the light of the flame. By mid-1953 he had restricted his burner program to his own designs, terminated the license agreement with May, and only sold under the Oertli brand .

In December 1951, ABIG-Werke in Oberstdorf took over the general agency for Germany and, together with Klöckner Fuel Trading, set up a nationwide sales and service organization. In 1955 they sold 4,000 burners. From 1956 to 1989 the Sant'Andrea company manufactured and sold its burners under license in Novara, Italy .

In February 1956, he and his company, Ing. W. Oertli AG, moved to Dübendorf at Zürcherstrasse 130. He had 256 employees and a fleet of 56 service cars.

In 1958 he took over the sale of automatic water softeners from the American company Culligan in order to better utilize his service organization . He also runs a sales program of swimming pool accessories and design.

1959/60 he founded in Brussels , the Oertli SA Belgique and 1967 he took over the majority shareholding of ACTA SA in Paris. At the end of the 1960s there were license manufacturers in Germany, Italy, Brazil and India. He had agencies in Denmark, Holland, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Finland and Greece. With that he sold 350,000 burners.

On March 31, 1969, he sold his company to the American company American Standard , which operated foundries for cast iron boilers and radiators in Europe under the name Ideal Standard . The new company name was Oertli Standard AG .

With the sales proceeds he founded the Walter and Ambrosina Oertli Foundation , also known as the "Fondation Oertli". The focus of their awarding activities is the better understanding between Alemannic, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic Switzerland. 

After the license agreement with Klöckner Oertli had expired in 1974, Oertli's production was again busy. Despite this, American Standard withdrew from the European heating market in the following year and sold Oertli Standard AG in April 1977 to Walter Meier Holding AG in Zurich, where it traded as Oertli AG Dübendorf .

Publications

• Stations. From working-class child to industrialist ;
• 50 years of Oertli: 1929–1979 . Huber, Frauenfeld 1979

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: prolibri.de
2. ↑ Letters TIME, January 12, 1931
3. ↑ Founding of companies in Switzerland Mueller Science
4. ↑ In Re May Oil Burner Corp  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Findacase ™  
5. ↑ Via Leonardo da Vinci 18 - 28100 NOVARA - ITALIA ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Finlane SpA 
6. ↑ History ( Memento of the original from November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Oertlistiftung