His inventive genius has done more for the United States than any other, living or dead, and his improve ments would have greatly added to the riches of our country, long before they began to operate, had he not been prevented front bringing them into use by his narrow circumstances, and the want of a liberal pa tron, to enable him to force them on the public, with out waiting for the slowly acquired confidence of a people beyond whose intellects, on the subject of steam, he was full half a century in advance.
Evans could not have heard of the first high pres sure engine constructed by Leupold the German in 1720, for there was not one in the United States to give him any advice; and it is known, that the work of that mechanician has only been recently introduced into the country by a German artist. The merit of Evans was therefore his own. llis claim was for the " application of high elastic steam, the great advan tage of he says, I had discovered, demonstrated, explained, and made known. I have dispensed with the heavy beam, condenser, and air pump, and simplified the construction of the holler, cylinder, piston, and working gears : my plan requires a small forcing pump to supply the boiler. Thus, I have produced an engine ten times as powerful, more governable, and easier varied to suit any taste assigned to it, than that of Bolton and Watt: it can be constructed at half the price, and will expend only one third the fuel to do as much work as theirs."* lis patent was taken out in 1801, one year before the date of Messrs Trevithick's and Vivian's, for a high pressure steam engine in England.
No man can pretend to compete with Evans, except Fulton, and even the wealth produced by his suc cessful use of steam in navigation, cannot exceed that arising from the improvements on milling by Evans. In point of originality there can he no question as to the one to whom the honour is clue; for while Fulton was a child, Evans, from the mere force of his genius, after hearing of the immense power of steam exhibited in a boyish frolic, with a gun barrel, followed up the principle, and in 1792 he filed in the patent office drawings and specifications of his principles, with a view to secure to himself at a future time the right to his discoveries, when he should be enabled to put them to the test, and perfect them. Twenty-one years before
Fulton applied Bolton and Watts' low pressure en gine to boats, he pronounced upon the extensive utility of steam, not only in navigating boats, but in propel ling land carriages, and the driving of machinery, and actually demonstrated the truth of his theory in Phi ladelphia, in respect to the last mentioned object in 1801, and in reference to the two first, he proved it three years before Mr. Fulton had his first boat in operation in the North River, which was in the sum mer of 1807. Thus, in the opinion of Mr. Galloway the British engineer, " he fully established his claim to the first contrivance of a practicable steam boat."1 About the year 1772, being then an apprentice to a wheelwright, or wagon-maker, I laboured to discover some means of propelling land carriages, without ani mal power. All the modes that have since been tried (so far as I have have heard of them) such as wind, treadles with ratched wheels, crank tooth, &c. to be wrought by men, presented themselves to my mind, but were considered as tco futile to deserve an experi ment ; and I concluded that such motion was impos sible for want of a suitable original power.
But one of my brothers, on a Christmas evening, in formed me that he had that day been in company with a neighbouring blacksmith's boy ; who, for amuse ment, had stopped up the touch-hole of a gun barrel, then put in about a gill of water and rammed down a tight wad—after which they put the breech in the smith's fire ; when it discharged itself with as loud a crack as if it had been loaded with powder.
It immediately occurred to me that here was the power to propel any wagon, if I could only apply it ; and I sat myself to work to find out the means. I laboured for some time without success. At length a book fell into my hands describing the old atmos pheric steam engine. I was astonished to observe that they had so far erred as to. use the steam only to form a vacuum to apply the mere pressure of the atmos phere, instead of applying the elastic power of the steam for original motion ; the power of which I sup posed irresistible.