1805 Oruktor Amphibolos

Oruktor Amphibolos

• Oliver Evans patented a new steam engine
• but had some difficulty finding a use for it.
• He convinced the Philadelphia Board of Health
• that he could build and operate
• a steam-powered dredge to clear the harbor.
• He built his dredger in a flat-bottomed scow
• thirty feet long, twelve feet wide,
• so that the finished machine with its paddlewheel
• weighed about seventeen tons.
• Having no way to move it, he put it on four wheels,
• which collapsed from the weight.
• He installed more heavy-duty wheels
• and connected them to the engine with a belt.
• Thus he was able to move the dredger under its own power
• through the streets to the Schuylkill River,
• the first automobile in the United States
• and the first amphibious craft in the world;
• however, it proved to be ineffective as a dredger.

Mars Works

• Evans named his factory after the Roman god of war
• and employed thirty-five workers to build heavy machinery, castings,
• and custom-made steam engines of his own designs.
• The works included an iron foundry, a moldmaker’s shop,
• a millstone maker, blacksmith’s shops to work wrought iron,
• and a six-horsepower steam engine to grind and bore castings.
• The Mars Works built over a hundred steam engines.
• It cast naval canons for the War of 1812
• and built steam engines for the Philadelphia Mint in 1816.

Obscure iron artifacts of the nineteenth century

• Some of the finest eggs that Fabergé made
• were made of iron, lighter than gold!
• The first man-made hummingbird that could fly
• was fashioned of sixteenth-inch plate iron.
• The more durable pirate peg legs were iron,
• but were heavily oiled to keep from rusting.
• The first cast-iron computers were installed
• in Captain Nemo’s Nautilus.
• Iron, the most common element on earth,
• was used not only for nails, swords, and chains.
• Wrought and cast iron were the plastics
• of the nineteenth century,
• used for everything from pens and toothpicks
• to the stays of ladies’ corsets.
• What iron works of the time couldn’t make from iron
• was hardly worth writing about.