Taken From: Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer's monthly journal, pub.1873
THE TRUE INVENTOR OF THE
LOCOMOTIVE.
LOCOMOTIVE.
Adrian, Mich., 8ept, 1873. UEssBs. Wilson A Obben:
On Redclay Creek—a tributary to the Christine, running into it parallel with the Brandywine, near the city of Wilmington, a number of mills have seated themselves, attracted by its swift torrent, amid scenery of steeps and rapids, comparable to that on the Lehigh about Mauch Chunk. Of these the most interesting traditions attach to the Falkland Mills. Their name may remind the reader of the first novel of the late Lord Lytton Falkland, written in 1828—but it was given to the spot long before, in designation o f a primitive settlement, Falkland. The association with this site is that of Oliver Evans, the true inventor of the Locomotive, who here worked and dreamed in a mill enriched with his contrivances. Evans, like Fitch, is one ot the world's lost renowns. Had the Legislators of his time possessed sagacity enough to endow his inventions, the advantages of steam transport would have been anticipated by several years, and the glory would have radiated from the Deleware River instead of from the Hudson. His design for a Locomotive was sent to England in 1787, disputing priority with the Steam "Wagons" of James Watt. He built steamboats at Philadelphia in 1802 and 1803, and ran them successfully, antedating by five years the Clermont of Robert Fulton—Fulton whom people are beginning to regard with Mr. Stone, author of the History of New York, as the man who received the greatest quality of undeserved praise of all who ever, lived.
Oliver Evans, born in 1756 of a respectable family, was a miller at Falkland, where his smaller inventions were first put in use. The plank just under the apex of the roof, which he used to resort to, as a private study, was shown until 1867, when the old mill was burned. Up among the swallows, as he lay on the board—to which, as Beecher expresses it, "he brought the softlings" the children of his genius were conceived and delivered. The mill was full of his labor-saving machines,/ which clattered to the babling Bedclay. One of his notions was the mill " elevator," (an improvement of something he had seen in Marshalls mill, at Stanton) by which grain was raised to the top of the building in buckets set along a revolving belt which passed from the roof to the bottom, distributing the wheat with spouts to the bolt. This was set up by contributions among the millers at Shipley's great mill in Wilmington, and also introduced into his own when his other inventions of the "Conveyer " and the "hopper bag" (attracted the stares of the rival mill-rights. Poor Oliver was known to the fat millers of this neighborhood as the inconvenient person who was always wanting the loan of a thousand dollars to carry out a new invention. The " thinking men " among them sagely argued that his improvements would benefit the consumer, by increasing the supply of flour and making it cheap—a clear detriment to the interest of capital.
Then Oliver plunged desperately into his idea of steam motion, losing the faint vestages of his repute for wit, and died poor and heart broken in 1819—the hero of an unwritten tragedy. The happy hours of his life, were the hours on the dusty plank in the mill gable at Faulkland.
The above article was copied from LippincoU't Magazine, as a rare bit of biography worthy to be transfered to the columns of your valuable Journal, which is read by so many mechanics. There is perhaps no journal in the United States the pages of which are perused with greater care and in which a greater interest is felt for its success, than your very valuable journal. Yours, s. w. s.
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