Part 3 (1/2)

”Evans was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to a wheelwright. He was a thoughtful, studious boy, who devoured eagerly the few books to which he had access, even by the light of a fire of shavings, when denied a candle by his parsimonious master. He says that in 1779, when only seventeen years old, he began to contrive some method of propelling land carriages by other means than animal power; and that he thought of a variety of devices, such as using the force of the wind and treadles worked by men; but as they were evidently inadequate, was about to give up the problem as unsolvable for want of a suitable source of power, when he heard that some neighboring blacksmith's boys had stopped up the touch-hole of a gun barrel, put in some water, rammed down a tight wad, and, putting the breech into the smith's fire, the gun had discharged itself with a report like that of gunpowder. This immediately suggested to his fertile mind a new source of power, and he labored long to apply it, but without success, until there fell into his hands a book describing the old atmospheric steam engine of Newcomen, and he was at once struck with the fact that steam was only used to produce a vacuum while to him it seemed clear that the elastic power of the steam if applied directly to moving the piston, would be far more efficient.

He soon satisfied himself that he could make steam wagons, but could convince no one else of this possibility.”*

* Coleman Sellers, ”Oliver Evans and His Inventions,”

”Journal of the Franklin Inst.i.tute”, July, 1886: vol. CXXII, p. 3.

Evans was then living in Delaware, where he was born, and where he later worked out his inventions in flour-milling machinery and invented and put into service the high-pressure steam engine. He appears to have moved to Philadelphia about 1790, the year of Franklin's death and of the Federal Patent Act; and, as we have seen, the third patent issued by the Government at Philadelphia was granted to him. About this time he became absorbed in the hard work of writing a book, the ”Millwright and Miller's Guide”, which he published in 1795, but at a heavy sacrifice to himself in time and money. A few years later he had an established engine works in Philadelphia and was making steam engines of his own type that performed their work satisfactorily.

The Oruktor Amphibolos, or Amphibious Digger, which came out of his shop in 1804, was a steamdriven machine made to the order of the Philadelphia Board of Health for dredging and cleaning the docks of the city. It was designed, as its name suggests, for service either in water or on sh.o.r.e.

It propelled itself across the city to the river front, puffing and throwing off clouds of steam and making quite a sensation on the streets.

Evans had never forgotten his dream of the ”steam wagon.” His Oruktor had no sooner begun puffing than he offered to make for the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Company steamdriven carriages to take the place of their six-horse Conestoga wagons, promising to treble their profits.

But the directors of the road were conservative men and his arguments fell on deaf ears.

In the same year Evans pet.i.tioned Congress for an extension of the patent on his flour-milling machinery, which was about to expire. He had derived little profit from this important invention, as the new machinery made its way very slowly, but every year more and more millers were using it and Evans received royalties from them. He felt sure that Congress would renew his patent, and, with great expectations for the future, he announced a new book in preparation by himself to be called ”The Young Engineer's Guide”. It was to give the most thorough treatment to the subject of the steam engine, with a profusion of drawings to ill.u.s.trate the text. But Evans reckoned without the millers who were opposing his pet.i.tion. Though they were profiting by his invention, they were unwilling to pay him anything, and they succeeded in having his bill in Congress defeated. It was a hard blow for the struggling author and inventor. His income cut off, he was obliged to reduce the scale of his book ”and to omit many of the ill.u.s.trations he had promised.”

He wrote the sad story into the name of the book. It came out under the t.i.tle of ”The Abortion of the Young Engineer's Guide”.

Four years later, when Congress restored and extended his patent, Evans felt that better days were ahead, but, as said already, he was too far ahead of his time to be understood and appreciated. Incredulity, prejudice, and opposition were his portion as long as he lived.

Nevertheless, he went on building good engines and had the satisfaction of seeing them in extensive use. His life came to an end as the result of what to him was the greatest possible tragedy. He was visiting New York City in 1819, when news came to him of the destruction by an incendiary of his beloved shops in Philadelphia. The shock was greater than he could bear. A stroke of apoplexy followed, from which he died.

The following prophecy, written by Oliver Evans and published in 1812, seventeen years before the practical use of the locomotive began, tells us something of the vision of this early American inventor:

”The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines from one city to another almost as fast as birds fly--fifteen to twenty miles an hour. Pa.s.sing through the air with such velocity--changing the scenes in such rapid succession--will be the most exhilarating, delightful exercise. A carriage will set out from Was.h.i.+ngton in the morning, and the pa.s.sengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine in Philadelphia, and sup at New York the same day.

”To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid so nearly level as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal line, made of wood or iron, on smooth paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriages so that they may pa.s.s each other in different directions and travel by night as well as by day; and the pa.s.sengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they do now in steam stage-boats.”*

*Cited by Coleman Sellers, Ibid., p. 13.

Another early advocate of steam carriages and railways was John Stevens, the rich inventor of Hoboken, who figures in the story of the steamboat.

In February, 1812, Stevens addressed to the commissioners appointed by the State of New York to explore a route for the Erie Ca.n.a.l an elaborate memoir calculated to prove that railways would be much more in the public interest than the proposed ca.n.a.l. He wrote at the same time to Robert R. Livingston (who, as well as Robert Fulton, his partner in the steamboat, was one of the commissioners) requesting his influence in favor of railways. Livingston, having committed himself to the steamboat and holding a monopoly of navigation on the waters of New York State, could hardly be expected to give a willing ear to a rival scheme, and no one then seems to have dreamed that both ca.n.a.l and railway would ultimately be needed. Livingston, however, was an enlightened statesman, one of the ablest men of his day. He had played a prominent part in the affairs of the Revolution and in the ratification of the Const.i.tution; had known Franklin and Was.h.i.+ngton and had negotiated with Napoleon the Louisiana Purchase. His reply to Stevens is a good statement of the objections to the railway, as seen at the time, and of the public att.i.tude towards it.

Robert R. Livingston to John Stevens

”Albany, 11th March, 1812.

”I did not, till yesterday, receive yours of the 5th of February; where it has loitered on the road I am at a loss to say. I had before read your very ingenious propositions as to the rail-way communication. I fear, however, on mature reflection, that they will be liable to serious objections, and ultimately more expensive than a ca.n.a.l. They must be double, so as to prevent the danger of two such heavy bodies meeting.

The walls on which they are placed must at least be four feet below the surface, and three above, and must be clamped with iron, and even then, would hardly sustain so heavy a weight as you propose moving at the rate of four miles an hour on wheels. As to wood, it would not last a week; they must be covered with iron, and that too very thick and strong. The means of stopping these heavy carriages without a great shock, and of preventing them from running upon each other (for there would be many on the road at once) would be very difficult. In case of accidental stops, or the necessary stops to take wood and water &c many accidents would happen. The carriage of condensed water would be very troublesome. Upon the whole, I fear the expense would be much greater than that of ca.n.a.ls, without being so convenient.”*

* John Stevens, ”Doc.u.ments Tending to Prove the Superior Advantages of Rail-Ways and Steam-Carriages over Ca.n.a.l Navigation” (1819). Reprinted in ”The Magazine of History with Notes and Queries”, Extra Number 54 (1917).

Stevens, of course, could not convince the commissioners. ”The Communication from John Stevens, Esq.,” was referred to a committee, who reported in March: ”That they have considered the said communication with the attention due to a gentleman whose scientific researches and knowledge of mechanical powers ent.i.tle his opinions to great respect, and are sorry not to concur in them.”

Stevens, however, kept up the fight. He published all the correspondence, hoping to get aid from Congress for his design, and spread his propaganda far and wide. But the War of 1812 soon absorbed the attention of the country. Then came the Erie Ca.n.a.l, completed in 1825, and the extension into the Northwest of the great c.u.mberland Road.

From St. Louis steamboats churned their way up the Missouri, connecting with the Santa Fe Trail to the Southwest and the Oregon Trail to the far Northwest. Horses, mules, and oxen carried the overland travelers, and none yet dreamed of being carried on the land by steam.

Back East, however, and across the sea in England, there were a few dreamers. Railways of wooden rails, sometimes covered with iron, on which wagons were drawn by horses, were common in Great Britain; some were in use very early in America. And on these railways, or tramways, men were now experimenting with steam, trying to harness it to do the work of horses. In England, Trevithick, Blenkinsop, Ericsson, Stephenson, and others; in America, John Stevens, now an old man but persistent in his plans as ever and with able sons to help him, had erected a circular railway at Hoboken as early as 1826, on which he ran a locomotive at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Then in 1828 Horatio Allen, of the Delaware and Hudson Ca.n.a.l Company, went over to England and brought back with him the Stourbridge Lion. This locomotive, though it was not a success in practice, appears to have been the first to turn a wheel on a regular railway within the United States. It was a seven days' wonder in New York when it arrived in May, 1829. Then Allen s.h.i.+pped it to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where the Delaware and Hudson Ca.n.a.l Company had a tramway to bring down coal from the mountains to the terminal of the ca.n.a.l. On the crude wooden rails of this tramway Allen placed the Stourbridge Lion and ran it successfully at the rate of ten miles an hour. But in actual service the Stourbridge Lion failed and was soon dismantled.