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Oliver Evans

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tomligon (talk | contribs) at 21:40, 11 September 2012 (Changed "visionary" to "prophetic". At his time, "visionary" meant "delusional", and Evans hated being called that.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Oliver Evans
Born(1755-09-13)13 September 1755
Newport, Delaware
Died15 April 1819(1819-04-15) (aged 63)
New York, New York

Oliver Evans (13 September 1755 – 15 April 1819) was an American inventor. Evans was born in Newport, Delaware to a family of Welsh settlers. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a wheelwright.

Evans' first invention was in 1777, when he designed a machine for making card teeth for carding wool. He went into business with his brothers and produced a number of improvements in the flour milling industry.[1]

Evans devoted a great deal of his time to patents, patent extensions, and enforcement of his patents.[2]

Evans design for automated flour milling

In 1792 he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He produced an improved high-pressure steam engine in 1801.[3] For some years he contemplated the idea of applying steam power to wagons. He was granted a patent for a steam-carriage design in 1789, but did not produce a working example of such a machine until over a decade later (see below on his Oruktor Amphibolos). Part of his difficulties was a failure to get financial backing. After lack of support in his native land, in 1794 he sent copies of some his designs to Great Britain in an attempt to interest investors there.

Evans designed a refrigeration machine which ran on vapor in 1805, so he is often called[by whom?] the inventor of the refrigerator, although he never built one. (His design was modified by Jacob Perkins, who obtained the first patent for a refrigerating machine in 1834.)

As noted by Roe, Evans is best known for the system of conveyors and other equipment he developed for his automatic flour mill:

"He practically invented the modern science of handling materials."[4] Joseph Wickham Roe, 1916

Automatic flour mill

Evans first invention of widespread importance was an automated flour mill which operated continuously through the use of bulk material handling devices including bucket elevators, conveyor belts, and Archimedean screws. Evans described this invention in The Young Mill-wright and Millers' Guide. He patented this invention in a few states and, when the US patent system was established, in the federal patent system (Third U.S. Patent).[3]

Evans' description of his fully automatic flour mill:

" These five machines…perform every necessary movement of the grain, and meal, from one part of the mill to another, and from one machine to another, through all the various operations, from the time the grain is emptied from the wagoner's bag….until completely manufactured into flour…without the aid of manual labor, excepting to set the different machines in motion."[5]

The automatic flour mill was built ca. 1785 in Newcastle County, Delaware.

He soon died after from a stroke. [4]

The Evans material handling system became widely used in flour mills and breweries during the 19th century.[4]

David Hounshell (1984) acknowledged the influence of Evans'es automatic flour mill in the sequence of innovations leading up to the assembly line.[6]

The Oruktor Amphibolos

The Oruktor Amphibolos, as illustrated in "The Boston mechanic and journal of the useful arts and sciences" (July, 1834)

One device for which Oliver Evans is known today is his Oruktor Amphibolos, or "Amphibious Digger", built on commission from the Philadelphia Board of Health. The Board was concerned with the problem of dredging and cleaning the city's dockyards, and in 1805 Evans convinced them to contract with him for a steam-powered dredge.[7]

No technical drawings of the device survive, and the only evidence for its design come from Oliver Evans' own descriptions, which are contradictory, and most likely exaggerated. He describes the vehicle as a 30-foot (9.1 m) long 15 ton scow, powered by a 5 horse-power steam engine. For a demonstration of his long-held beliefs in the possibility of land steam demonstration, Evans mounted the hull on 4 wheels and may have connected the engine to them, to drive it through Philadelphia streets on the way to the river. The small size of the engine, the large size of the vehicle, and the lack of any contemporary evidence other than Evans' own writings for it make this seem unlikely. Evans claimed that his dredge was the first self-powered amphibious vehicle, as well as the first self-powered land vehicle in the United States (steam powered road vehicles had already been used earlier in France and Great Britain). The Oruktor Amphibolos was never a success as a dredger, and after a few years of sitting at the dock was sold for parts.

Subsequently, Evans wrote about the Oruktor in many publications, and each time the achievements became more impressive. He also 'corrected' the date of the machine from 1805 to 1804, possibly in a dispute about steamboat patents, and this inaccuracy has since been perpetuated by several commentators.[8]

Oliver Evans wrote up proposals to mechanize road vehicles, but failed to get backing from investors, who saw the scheme as impractical. In 1812 he published a prophetic description of the nation connected by a network of railroad lines with transportation by swift steam locomotives. It should be remembered that at the time the locomotive was little more than a crude curiosity, and no attempts to use it for long distance transport had yet been made; see: History of rail transport.

"“Carriages powered by steam will come into universal use, and travel at the rate of 300 miles per day.”[9] Oliver Evans, 1813

High pressure steam engine

1801 steam engine design

Evans invented, but did not build, a high-pressure steam engine in 1801[10] (patented 1804), a few years after Richard Trevithick of England constructed a high pressure engine. Evans' engine, like his later Oruktor Amphibolos, used a grasshopper beam. The high pressure steam engine had a higher power to weight ratio, making it practical to make locomotives and steamboats.[11] The high pressure steam engine was mechanically simpler than condensing engines making it less costly to build and maintain, plus it did not require large volumes of condensing water. These features made it well suited for a variety of industrial applications.[12] [13]

In 1811, he founded the Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company, which in addition to engines made other heavy machinery and castings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The location of the factory in the Mississippi watershed was important in the development of high pressure steam engines for the use in riverboats.[12]

Death

In 1819, while in New York City, Oliver Evans was informed that his workshop in Philadelphia had burned to the ground. Evans suffered a stroke at the news, and died soon after. He is buried in Trinity Cemetery, Broadway at 154th Street, New York City.[14]

Tributes

In World War II, the United States liberty ship SS Oliver Evans was named in his honor.

Further reading

  • Greville, Bathe; Bathe, Dorothy (1935). Oliver Evans: A Chronicle of Early American Engineering. Philadelphia. ISBN 978-0-405-04684-1<Ayer Co Pub (1972)> {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Ferguson, Eugene S. (1980). Oliver Evans: Inventive genius of the American industrial revolution. Greenville, Delaware: The Hagley Museum.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Concise biography of Oliver Evans
  2. ^ Ferguson, Eugene S. (1980). Oliver Evans: Inventive genius of the American industrial revolution. Greenville, Delaware: The Hagley Museum.
  3. ^ a b Thomson, Ross (2009). Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Invention in the United States 1790-1865. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-9141-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  4. ^ a b c Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, LCCN 16011753. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-24075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).
  5. ^ Evans, Oliver (1848). The young mill-wright and miller's guide, 12th edition. Lea & Blanchard. p. 204. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ Hounshell, David A. (1984), From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-2975-8, LCCN 83016269, OCLC 1104810110
  7. ^ Kimes, Beverly (1996). standard catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. Krause publications. ISBN 0-87341-428-4.
  8. ^ Lubar, Steve (Spring 2006). "Was This America's First Steamboat, Locomotive, and Car?". Invention and Technology Magazine. 21 (4). AmericanHeritage.com. Retrieved 2008-04-09. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  9. ^ Cowan, Ruth Schwartz (1997). A Social History of American Technology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 113. ISBN 0-19-504606Template:Inconsistent citations {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  10. ^ Semmens, P.W.B.; Goldfinch, A.J. (2003) [2000]. How Steam Locomotives Really Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 97–99. ISBN 978-0-19-860782-3.
  11. ^ Thomson 2009, p. 34
  12. ^ a b Hunter, Louis C. (1985). A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1730-1930, Vol. 2: Steam Power. Charolttesville: University Press of Virginia.
  13. ^ Cowan, Ruth Schwartz (1997). A Social History of American Technology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 0-19-504606. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
  14. ^ Oliver Evans burial sites "April 15, 1819: Oliver Evans, Delaware inventor, died in New York and was buried at Zion Episcopal Church near the Bowery on lower Manhattan. His remains later were re-interred in an unmarked grave in Trinity Cemetery, Broadway at 157th Street in 1890." Accessed on May 11, 2008.

References

  • Bathe, Greville and Dorothy Bathe (1935), Oliver Evans: a chronicle of early American engineering, Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
  • Goddard, Dwight (2008). Eminent Engineers. BiblioBazaar, LLC,. p. 284. ISBN 978-0-559-68546-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

Works authored

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oliver Evans.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Evans, Oliver".



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