Scientific American Supplement, No. 620 | Page 3

Nordenfelt guns, fourteen small guns, and five
torpedo tubes--one at the stern, two amidships, and two at the bow of
the ship.
It is worthy of note that this war cruiser was constructed in fifteen
months, or three months under the stipulated contract time; in fact, the
official trial of the vessel took place exactly eighteen months from the
signing of the contract. Not only is this the fastest war cruiser afloat,
but her owners also possess in the El Destructor what is probably the
simplest torpedo catcher afloat, a vessel which has attained a speed of
22½ knots, or over 26 miles, per hour. --_Engineering._
* * * * *

OLIVER EVANS AND THE STEAM ENGINE.
A correspondent of the New York Times, deeming that far too much
credit has been given to foreigners for the practical development of the
steam engine, contributes the following interesting _resume_:
Of all the inventions of ancient or modern times none have more
importantly and beneficently influenced the affairs of mankind than the
double acting high pressure steam engine, the locomotive, the steam
railway system, and the steamboat, all of which inventions are of
American origin. The first three are directly and the last indirectly
associated with a patent that was granted by the State of Maryland, in
1787, being the very year of the framing of the Constitution of the
United States. In view of the momentous nature of the services which
these four inventions have rendered to the material and national
interests of the people of the United States, it is to be hoped that neither
they nor their origin will be forgotten in the coming celebration of the
centennial of the framing of the Constitution.
The high pressure steam engine in its stationary form is almost
ubiquitous in America. In all great iron and steel works, in all factories,
in all plants for lighting cities with electricity, in brief, wherever in the
United States great power in compact form is wanted, there will be
found the high pressure steam engine furnishing all the power that is
required, and more, too, if more is demanded, because it appears to be
equal to every human requisition. But go beyond America. Go to Great
Britain, and the American steam engine--although it is not termed
American in Great Britain--will be found fast superseding the English
engine--in other words, James Watt's condensing engine. It is the same
the world over. On all the earth there is not a steam locomotive that
could turn a wheel but for the fact that, in common with every
locomotive from the earliest introduction of that invention, it is simply
the American steam engine put on wheels, and it was first put on
wheels by its American inventor, Oliver Evans, being the same Oliver
Evans to whom the State of Maryland granted the before mentioned
patent of 1787.
He is the same Oliver Evans whom Elijah Galloway, the British writer

on the steam engine, compared with James Watt as to the authorship of
the locomotive, or rather "steam carriage," as the locomotive was in
those days termed. After showing the unfitness of Mr. Watt's low
pressure steam engine for locomotive purposes, Mr. Galloway, more
than fifty years ago, wrote: "We have made these remarks in this place
in order to set at rest the title of Mr. Watt to the invention of steam
carriages. And, taking for our rule that the party who first attempted
them in practice by mechanical arrangements of his own is entitled to
the reputation of being their inventor, Mr. Oliver Evans, of America,
appears to us to be the person to whom that honor is due." He is the
same Oliver Evans whom the _Mechanics' Magazine_, of London, the
leading journal of its kind at that period, had in mind when, in its
number of September, 1830, it published the official report of the
competitive trial between the steam carriages Rocket, San Pariel,
Novelty, and others on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
In that trial the company's engines developed about 15 miles in an hour,
and spurts of still higher speed. The Magazine points to the results of
the trial, and then, under the heading of "The First Projector of Steam
Traveling," it declares that all that had been accomplished had been
anticipated and its feasibility practically exemplified over a quarter of a
century before by Oliver Evans, an American citizen. The Magazine
showed that many years before the trial Mr. Evans had offered to
furnish steam carriages that, on level railways, should run at the rate of
300 miles in a day, or he would not ask pay therefor. The writer will
state that this offer by Mr. Evans was made in November, 1812, at
which date not a British steam carriage had yet accomplished seven