EVANS, OLIVER (1755-1819). An American inventor. Ile was born at Newport, Del., and in his early youth was apprenticed to a wheel wright, thus being afforded an opportunity of displaying uncommon inventive genius. When twenty-two years of age he invented a machine for making the wire card-teeth used in carding cotton and wool, which hitherto had been pro duced by hand work. He later invented im proved machinery for flour-mills, which enabled the miller to make not only finer flour. but twenty pounds more to the barrel, at the same time cutting down the cost of labor one-half. Having invented a steam-engine, in 1786 he asked for a patent from the Legislature of Pennsyl vania for its application to mill machinery and to the steam-carriage. Evans made the first. high-pressure steam-engine. and the first steam dredging-machine used in the United States.
This dredge, weighing about 4000 pounds, was put on wheels and propelled itself to the Schuyl kill River, one and one-half miles distant, where it was connected to a stern paddle-wheel and navigated the Sehuylkill down to its junction with the Delaware. This is supposed to have been the first actual propulsion of a carriage on land by steam in America. He designed and eon structcd an engine for a steam-vessel on the Mississippi River, but the boat in which it was to be mounted was never completed and the engine was installed in a sawmill, where it ran most successfully. Ile built many steam-engines and invented much new machinery, and has been termed the 'Watt of America.' He died in New York, April 21, 1819. Consult Thurston, Growth of the Steam Engine (New York, 1878).