High Pressure Steam Engine
Evans invented, but did not build, a high-pressure steam engine in 1801 (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. 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.
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.
Read more about this topic: Oliver Evans
Famous quotes containing the words high, pressure, steam and/or engine:
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Ephesians, 6:12.
St. Paul’s words were used by William Blake as an epigraph to The Four Zoas (c. 1800)
“Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
“The will is never free—it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car—it can’t steer.”
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957)