Sugar Apparatus Manufacturing Company.

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.