Inventor Name
Lillie, S. Morris
Repository
Hagley Museum & Library
Manuscripts & Archives Department
P.O. Box 3630
Wilmington, DE 19807-0630
302-658-2400
https://www.hagley.org/research
Physical Description
2 linear ft.
Summary
The Sugar Apparatus Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia was typical of many of the small specialty manufacturers of the region. S. Morris Lillie, the company president, patented his single and multiple effect evaporators and began marketing them in 1893. The evaporators were primarily used to recover crystallized sugar from solutions made from sugar cane or sugar beets. As was common in such operations, Lillie contracted the actual manufacture to a variety of local foundries and machine companies and employed an erecting engineer to supervise the installations. Lillie’s evaporators were widely used by sugar refineries in North America, Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines and also to concentrate sugar cane juice on the plantations. The apparatus was also adapted to evaporate tannin extract, glue liquors, tank waters, and other solutions, including salt refinery. Lillie sold evaporators to both the United States and Japanese navies for on-board distillation of drinking water. With increasing debts, Lillie reorganized the company in 1915 and moved its operations from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Del. Manufacturing appears to have been handled by Pusey & Jones of Wilmington and later by the Wheeler Condenser & Engineering Company of Carteret, N.J. After 1922, Lillie no longer manufactured evaporators, but merely licensed the use of his designs. Lillie sued the Navy’s Bureau of Engineering for patent infringement and for payment for drawings furnished, hoping that the settlement would enable him to pay his debts. The bulk of the records cease in 1933, leaving no indication of the firm’s fate. By 1964, the records and drawings were in the possession of Ford Bros. & Co., coppersmiths and machinists of Philadelphia., which apparently had been building Lillie evaporators for a number of years. The records of the Sugar Apparatus Manufacturing Company consist of an order book, letter books, correspondence files, and drawings. The order book (1893-1910, 1919) lists the names of customers, location of refinery or plant, type of material to be evaporated, evaporator capacity, number of effects, materials, sources of parts, weights and costs. Three letter books of S. Morris Lillie (1913-1914, 1914-1915, 1922 and 1923-1933) contain outbound correspondence. The letters, mostly to customers and suppliers, are highly detailed in describing the evaporation process. The letters also document Lillie’s dispute with the Navy’s Bureau of Engineering during the 1920s and early 1930s. Letters to Harry Applin, the company’s erection engineer, discuss the construction of the evaporators and on-site problems. Correspondence with the American Tube Works of Somerville, Mass., a major supplier in the 1920s and 1930s, document Lillie’s ongoing financial difficulties. Additional correspondence includes a file with the Japanese Imperial Navy (1928-1931) regarding construction of a Lillie evaporator on a naval vessel. Another concerns Ford Bros. & Company’s bid to build two Lillie evaporators at the Calmette refinery of the American Sugar Company in 1964. The records also include three company publications describing its products and there operation, and rolled working drawings for details of Lillie evaporators (1895-1948).
