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Evans Patent Safety Guard and the Failure of Scientific Technology in the Steam Boat Inspection Service, 1830-1862

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Evans Patent Safety Guard and the Failure of Scientific Technology in the Steam Boat Inspection Service, 1830-1862 ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE PRACTICAL ENGINEERS’ REBELLION: EVANS PATENT SAFETY GUARD AND THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGY IN THE STEAM BOAT INSPECTION SERVICE, 1830-1862 John A. Bernhardt III, Master of Arts, 2008 Directed By: Dr. Robert Friedel, Professor, History Department The U.S. Congress’s initiative to solve the problem of steamboat boiler explosions in the mid-nineteenth century resulted in the Steamboat Act of 1852. The Act brought radical changes to the western rivers, including reform of the engineering cadre, introduction of new safety devices and procedures, and the creation of a new bureaucracy (the Steam Boat Inspection Service). One of the new safety devices introduced by the Treasury Department was the controversial Evans Patent Safety Guard. This is the story of the safety guard as a central actor in framing the expertise of scientists, inventors, and practical engineers in attempting to make technology safe. The case study of the safety guard helps us to understand where expertise came from, how that expertise was defined and justified by government officials and inspectors, and why the notion of technological expertise depends on a complex mix of technical, institutional, and socioeconomic factors. THE PRACTICAL ENGINEERS’ REBELLION: EVANS PATENT SAFETY GUARD AND THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGY IN THE STEAM BOAT INSPECTION SERVICE, 1830-1862. By John Anthony Bernhardt III Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor Robert F. Friedel, Chair Professor David B. Sicilia Professor Whitman H. Ridgway © Copyright by John Anthony Bernhardt 2008 Preface This is the story of the Evans Patent Safety Guard. The safety guard was a self-acting mechanism perfected by inventor Cadwallader Evans (son of Oliver Evans) in 1850 that warned the steamboat engineer of an unsafe condition in his boiler. Although the safety guard was an obscure invention, and one that apparently did not work well, nevertheless in the mid-1850s it became the technological centerpiece of the Treasury Department’s steamboat safety initiative. The public never knew of the safety guard; it was acknowledged only by the inventor, government officials, their scientific experts, and certain segments of the steamboating community. Yet, this obscure invention was installed by the Treasury Department on hundreds of American steamboats by 1855 and dominated the relations between all of the technological actors in our story. Why was this so? Answering this question is the prime focus of this thesis. We will show how government regulation and policy regarding steamboat safety revolved around the safety guard, how the practical engineers aboard steamboats saw the safety guard as robbing them of their professional autonomy and control over their machinery (they labeled the guards “intolerable nuisances,” “humbug,” and threats to innovation), how Government officials believed that the self-acting control of the safety guard was necessary as an insurance policy against incompetence and neglect of the engineers, and how an engineers’ rebellion occurred that brought the safety guard’s career to an end by the early 1860s. ii For historians of technology, the occurrence of the practical engineers’ rebellion is fortunate. The conflict generated much archival documentation, mostly correspondence, that shows us how the Department worked with its inspectors, the steamboating community, and scientists in the attempt to execute its technological safety program. Many of these records, kept in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C., have not seen light in 158 years, and thus provide new material. A sizable portion of the correspondence focuses on the central component of the safety guard, fusible alloy metal, which was designed to perform as an “active thermometer” to monitor heat in the boiler. Therefore, much of our story explains how government and academic chemists tried to develop an accurate alloy, and how the inventor used scientific rhetoric to transform the status of his machine for employing the alloy, the safety guard, from that of a mere clever mechanism to that of a scientific instrument. In these attempts to develop and showcase the safety guard as a progressive and sophisticated scientific instrument, a rich story unfolds of the relationship of science and invention to engineering, and all of these to government legal administration of technology in Antebellum America. As such, this story informs us of a different side of the so-called Steamboat Inspection Service than we are used to seeing in existing historical accounts, which have focused on the dry legislative history of the Steamboat Acts of 1838 and 1852. With a new micro-historical perspective, we will be able to see the inside workings of the Inspection Service with its human and iii technological actors, as well as gain a better understanding of the socioeconomic and institutional sides of expertise in the advancement of technology during this period. iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my father, John A. Bernhardt, Jr., an accomplished professional engineer who taught me the love of learning for its own sake. v Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Dr. Robert Friedel, Professor of the History of Technology at the University of Maryland, in guiding the work necessary to complete this thesis; the examination board consisting of Dr. Friedel, Dr. David Sicilia (Professor, History of Technology) and Dr. Whitman Ridgway (Professor, American History) for their reading and commenting on the manuscript; Mr. Charles W. Johnson and the staff of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., for their assistance in locating and providing records of the Steam Boat Inspection Service; Mr. Theodore R. Hazen, who took the time to explain the workings of Oliver Evans’s revolutionary flour mills; Mr. Raymond Reese for his suggestions in the outlining phase; Mr. Robert Rasmussen for contributing technical understanding; and Mr. Edward Jones, who provided valuable assistance in editing the manuscript. Finally, the author deeply appreciates the love, support, and forbearance of his wife, Peggy Lynn Bernhardt, during the long course of research and writing. vi Table of Contents Preface........................................................................................................................... ii Dedication..................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements...................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents........................................................................................................ vii List of Tables ............................................................................................................... ix List of Figures.............................................................................................................. ix CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 1.1 What This Thesis Is About ................................................................................ 3 1.2 General Facts about Steamboats on the Western Rivers ................................. 11 1.3 The Flip Side of Progress: The Phenomenon of Explosions .......................... 17 1.4 The Reaction of the Public, Press, and the Steamboat Industry to Boiler Explosions; Ineffectual Early State Regulations............................................. 31 1.5 First Steps to Federal Regulation: The United States Government Mobilizes Its Expertise (1824-1836) .............................................................. 37 1.6 The Steamboat Acts of 1838 and 1852: The “Good” Engineer in Ascendancy..................................................................................................... 45 CHAPTER 2. THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE, CADWALLADER EVANS, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SAFETY GUARD ...................................... 50 2.1 Introduction...................................................................................................... 50 2.2 Scientist and Inventor Devise the First Safety Guard, 1832-1850................... 84 2.3 Evans’s Important 1850 Treatise on Steam Boiler Explosions ..................... 110 2.4 Evan’s Last Years and General Comments on the Development of the Bache- Evans Safety Guard....................................................................................... 124 CHAPTER 3. THE TRANSITION PERIOD 1838-1852: PRELUDE TO THE STEAMBOAT ACT OF 1852..................................................................................131 3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................... 131 3.2 Improving the Steamboat Law....................................................................... 150 CHAPTER 4. THE INSPECTION SERVICE MOBILIZES FOLLOWING PASSAGE OF THE ACT OF 1852; RESISTANCE TO THE SAFETY GUARDS.................................................................................................. 160 4.1 Introduction and Background ........................................................................ 160 4.2 The Treasury Department Pushes the Safety Guard; Significance of the Safety Guard in
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