in Delaware county, Pa., in which the latter was 

 putting in a set of his elevators, hopper boy, and 

 flour press. Yet much of the conversation I listened 

 to both in going and returning on that never-to-be- 

 forgotten trip, is as fresh in my memory as if it had 

 occurred but yesterday. 



Mr. Evans had much to say on the difficulties in- 

 ventive mechanics labored under for want of pub- 

 lished records of what had preceded them, and for 

 works of reference to help the beginner. In speaking 

 of his own experience, he said that everything he had 

 undertaken he had been obliged to start at the very 

 foundation; often going over ground that others had 

 exhausted and abandoned, leasing no record. He 

 considered the greatest difficulty beginners had to en- 

 counter was want of reliable knowledge of what had 

 been done. 



Even at that early day Mr. Evans suggested and 

 urged the formation of a Mechanical Bureau that 

 should collect and publish all new inventions, com- 

 bined with reliable treatises on sound mechanical 

 principles, as the greatest help to beginners. He did 

 not believe it could at that time be made self-sustain- 

 ing, but it would be to the interest of mechanics, 

 manufacturers and merchants to subscribe to its 

 support. 



Another subject discussed was the importance of a 

 school to teach mechanical drawing. Mr. Evans 

 made all his drawings full size on chalked boards; he 

 had no confidence in working to scale with the char- 

 acter of labor to be had at that time. His drawing 

 instruments consisted of a two-foot rule, straight edge, 

 square and compass. His first designs were rough 

 pencil sketches, not drawn to scale. To combine and 

 reduce these full size working drawings and put them 

 in shape to exhibit, he depended upon Frederick and 

 John Eckstein, then copperplate engravers in Phila- 

 delphia. I think he named at a later date William 

 Kneass, s2 who was also a copperplate engraver, and 

 a good draftsman, but of this I am not quite certain. 



Mr. Evans gave an instance of the advantage, in 

 fact, the importance of artistically finished drawings 

 to the mechanic, by citing the Philadelphia water 

 works. He said it was Latrobe's fine drawing he 

 exhibited of the Boulton & Watt steam engine and 

 pumps, and above all the exterior of the pumping 

 house, with its Doric columns and pediments, both 



front and rear, its center dome-shaped building 

 covering the reservoir, with the novel expedient of 

 the stack and chimney, terminating on the apex of 

 the dome, vomiting its wreath of black smoke, that 

 caught the eye of the members of the city council that 

 adopted the plans and gave to Latrobe the super- 

 intendence of the work. Mr. Evans called it the city 

 plaything on which to expend money; more for 

 ornament than utility, barely calculated to supply 

 their wants without provision for a growing city, but 

 he said that notwithstanding Latrobe had classed him 

 among the visionaries, he would give him credit for 

 having introduced a higher standard of mechanical 

 drawing that would stimulate our native mechanics, 

 and in that respect they owed him much. 



Boy as I was at the time, it did not occur to me that 

 there might have been a dash of satire in Mr. Evans' 

 allusion to Mr. Latrobe, or that he might have been 

 a competitor with him in plans for the water works. 

 I do not now know that he was or was not. Beside 

 the Boulton & Watt condensing engine and pump in 

 the old Centre Square Water Works there was an 

 engine known as the "American Engine," a vertical 

 cylinder, lever-beam engine, the original Oliver 

 Evans engine, and I presume built by him or under 

 his supervision. This engine, if my recollection does 

 not deceive me, was oftener seen running than the 

 "great English engine," as it was then called. s3 



In speaking of the water works, Mr. Evans said 

 Philadelphia had paid dearly for rejecting a proposi- 

 tion of Nathan Sellers, who was then a member of 

 the council, for the city to purchase the Fairmount 

 hills and reserve them as a site for reservoirs when 

 the wants of the city should require an extension of 

 its water works, and he believed Mr. Sellers had 

 spoken prophetically when he said to the council that 

 he expected to live to see the Centre Square Water 

 Works torn down. Mr. Evans said that about that 



52 John Eckstein and William Kneass are noticed in Dictionary 

 oj American Biography. Eckstein died about 1 8 1 7 ; Kneass became 

 engraver at the U.S. Mint in 1824. 



53 Sellers has confused the Center Square Water Works with 

 the Fairmount Water Works. The former, built in 1799-1801, 

 contained one steam engine, 32 inches by 6 feet, to pump water 

 into an overhead reservoir. The engine was built by Nicholas 

 Roosevelt in his Soho Works near Newark, N.J. Another 

 similar engine, 40 inches by 6 feet, also by Roosevelt, was 

 located at the Schuylkill end of the supply tunnel, to supply the 

 Center Square pump. The Fairmount pumphouse, however, 

 answered to Sellers's description. Built in 1812-1815, the 

 works contained one locally built engine on the Boulton and 

 Watt plan and one engine, a Columbian, built by Evans. 

 Evans's engine was slightly more economical. (Bathe and 

 Bathe, cited in note 46 above, pp. 65, 21 1-213, 227, 246-247.) 



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