By the 1820's in the United States, when steamboats were common on western waters, these boats were mostly powered by engines built in the West (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, or Louisville), and of a distinctive western design specially suited to western needs. The first steam engines 【21】______ practical use in England and the United States were 【22】______ low-pressure design. This was the type first 【23】______ by James Watt, then manufactured by the firm of Boulton and Watt. Steam was 【24】______ in a large, double-acting vertical cylinder, but the steam reached only a few pounds of pressure per square inch. It was low-pressure engines of this type that 【25】______ first introduced into the United States by Robert Fulton. He 【26】______ such a Boulton and Watt engine from England to run the Clermont. But this type of engine was ,expensive and complicated, 【27】______ many precision-fitted moving parts.
The engine that became standard on western steamboats was of a different and 【28】______ design. It was the work primarily of an unsung hero of American industrial progress, Oliver Evans (1755-1819), the 【29】______ son of a Delaware farmer. Evans early became 【30】______ by the possibilities of mechanized production and steam power. As early as 1802 he 【31】______ a stationary steam engine of high-pressure design in his mill. Engines of this type were not 【32】______, but before Evans they were generally considered 【33】______ and dangerous. Within a decade the high-pressure engine, the new type, had become standard on western waters. Critics 【34】______ of western conditions often attacked it as wasteful and dangerous.
But people who really knew the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi 【35】______, with good reasons, that it was the only engine for them. In 【36】______ western rivers the weight of vessel and engine 【37】______ important; a heavy engine added to the problem of navigation. The high-pressure engine was 【38】______lighter in proportion to horsepower, and, with less than half as many moving parts, was much easier and cheaper to repair. The main advantages of low-pressure engines were safe operation and 【39】______ of fuel consumption, 【40】______ of which meant much in the West.
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A．on
B．by
C．for
D．in