U.S. Technology: History

Lesson 3: Industrialization

Evans, the Elevator and the Hopper Boy

Industrialization began in America at the same time the thirteen colonies were becoming the United States. The birth of industrialization in America occurred during the forty years between 1780 and 1820. Industrialization had already begun in England and was just beginning in America when the Revolution started. After the Revolution, the pace of life began to quicken in America and in industrialization.

While industrialization in America came on the heels of industrialization in England, it was not a carbon copy. Due to the unique resources available in America, industrialization was able to have its own special flavor. People involved in industrialization in America gave industrialization their own special touch, helping to make it unique. One of the best ways to understand this uniqueness is to look at some of the early men involved.

The first man I would like to look at is Oliver Evans. Evans was born in 1755 to a family of twelve children who lived on a farm, and in his early teens he was apprenticed to a wheelwright. During his apprenticeship he learned to build with both wood and metal. At the beginning of the 1780’s he and his brother owned a village store. Evans began to carefully observe the operations of several small gristmills, confident in the ability he gained during his apprenticeship to build things to make milling more efficient. He purchased a mill in Delaware and set out to build equipment to make it more efficient.

Evans called the first two of his devices the “grain elevator” and the “hopper boy”.

The grain elevator was a continuous leather belt that held a series of small buckets. The belt had pulleys attached to the shaft of a waterwheel; it was these pulleys that kept the machine in motion. The grain elevator was able to haul, or at least elevate, 300 bushels of gain every hour. Several strong men had previously done this work by hand.

The hopper boy was a large revolving rake that was twelve feet long. It was attached to a vertical drive shaft that was connected to the main shaft of the mill. The rake would spread the ground meal evenly on the floor of the hill so that it could dry, and then the grain was guided gradually to a chute that led to a hopper where the meal was sifted. This work was previously done by young boys; which is how the name came about.

Evan's inventions not only improved milling but they set in motion a desire to improve and speed up the manner in which all things were produced. What do you think Evan’s real importance in American history is? The next section will talk about something else Evan’s was working on…the steam engine!

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