Percival Everitt

Percival Everitt (born 1856) was an engineer born in Limpenhoe, Norfolk, the son of a farmer, and a co-founder of the Farmers Foundry Company. In 1878 he took out a patent for a ploughing engine, and in 1879 he established the agricultural and general engineering business of Everitt, Adams and Company with William John Adams, trading from Ryburgh in Norfolk. In 1880 he and Adams patented improvements in machinery for cutting chaff. In 1884 he and John Glas Sandeman patented an improved apparatus for delivering pre-paid goods, the field in which the coin-operated automatic machines of the 1880s were developed. By 1887 he was a director of the Automatic Weighing Machine Company and of the Post Card Automatic Supply Company, and he married Emma Potter of Hudson, New Jersey in 1886.