all before us.

In 1787, Oliver Evans introduced improvements in grain mills, and was
generally efficient as one of the beginners in the field of American
invention. Soon afterwards he is known to have made a steam-engine which
was the first high-pressure double-acting engine ever made. The engine
that used steam at each end of the cylinder with a vacuum and a
condenser, was in this first instance, so far as any record can be
found, supplanted by the engine of to-day. The reason of the delay it is
difficult to account for on any other grounds than lack of boldness, for
unquestionably the early experimenters knew that such an engine could be
made. They were afraid of the power they had evoked. Such a machine may
have seemed to them a willful toying with disaster. Their efforts were
bent during many years toward rendering a treacherous giant useful, yet
entirely harmless. Their boilers, greatly improved over those I have
mentioned, never were such as were afterwards made to suit the high
pressures required by the audacity of Hopkins. This audacity was the
mother of the locomotive, and of that engine which almost from that date
has been used for nearly every purpose of our modern life that requires
power. The American innovation may have passed unnoticed at the time,
but intentionally or otherwise it was imitated as a preliminary to all
modern engines. Nearly a century passed between the making of the first
practical engine and that one which now stands as the type of many
thousands. But now every little saw-mill in the American woods could
have, and finally did have, its little cheap, unscientific, powerful and
non-vacuum engine, set up and worked without experience, and maintained
in working order by an unskilled laborer. A thousand uses for steam grew
out of this experiment of a Yankee who knew no better than to tempt fate
with a high-pressure and speed and recklessness that has now become
almost universal.