Oliver Evans

The technology of milling was something, um, basic technology of, like a stone grindstone, um, turned either by water power or wind or, or maybe a draft animal, um, uh, y- at that time was literally hundreds if not thousands of years old.

Um, but then in the, uh, 1790s a Delaware man named Oliver Evans developed the first fully mechanized mill.

Um, I have a picture of this in my book and, uh, you know, it's his, his drawing from, probably from his patent application.

And it shows a man in one side of the mill pouring grain into the mill, and then a cutaway showing all the complicated machinery inside the mill for moving the grain through, through the milling process and, and the sorting and, and, and the, uh, bolting or sifting of the flour, till at the other end, um, the, uh, the grain is in barrels and it's being put into a boat.

More on this in the bonus facts later.

But it was not until a century later that a slew of scientists and inventors like Oliver Evans, John Gorrie, and Alexander Twinning, among others, developed the first practical mechanical refrigerant systems based on vapor compression and gas absorption cycles.

In all such cycles, ambient heat is absorbed by a liquid or gaseous refrigerant, causing it to change phase.

The refrigerant is then pumped to another area, the outside of a building or insulated refrigerator cabinet, for example, where the absorbed heat is released into the environment and the refrigerant again changes phase.

High-pressure boilers, where industrial modernity was born and where it first started killing people at scale.

Pioneers like Oliver Evans pushed boiler pressure higher to extract more mechanical power.

The metallurgy was primitive.

The consequences were explosive.

Early America's most important invention wasn't Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod or the cotton gin.

It was the world's first fully automated flour mill, built by Oliver Evans in the 1780s.

Evans' mill used a conveyor belt grain elevator, leather straps, wheels, and Archimedean screws to process wheat from raw grain to finished flour without any human hands touching it.

Prior to this automated system, milling relied on water wheels or wind to turn heavy millstones, and it was terrible work that involved mules or slaves, and other steps required grueling manual labor to haul heavy grain sacks up ladders and shovel meal across floors.

But the 18th century was, you know, in the United States, the early United States just after the Revolution, was a time of, like, a lot of, like, technological advances, where businessmen and inventors were really interested in pushing early United States into becoming, like, a more modern and almost industrial, as much as possible, an industrial nation.

And one of the great centers for milling during this period was the Delaware River Valley, around Philadelphia and that region.

And there was a guy living in Delaware named Oliver Evans, who was an inventor, and he was a miller, and he was always frustrated by the, you know, the primitive methods for grinding grain and all the labor that it took, which he thought was, you know, a complete waste of time and money.

And so he invented the first fully automated mill, and I have a picture of the mill in my book.

It's actually U.S. patent number three.

And Oliver Evans...

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