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 steam engine, high, pressure, steam and/or engine:
“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to sudden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“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)
“Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)