Even Tollefsen
Norwegian Sea Captain and Inventor

Even Tollefsen (September 4, 1841 – June 21, 1897) was a Norwegian sea captain and inventor.
Tollefsen built the first useful system for shipping oil in tankers. He was a talented engineer that acquired most of his technical knowledge and skills through self-study.
Life
Even Tollefsen was the son of Torleif (Tollef) Hansen (1806–1885) and Kristine Marie Evensdatter (1807–1860) and was born at Østre Oterbekk on the island of Nøtterøy. His father was a sailor and a farmer. The family lived in several places on Nøtterøy until his father purchased the Tømmerholt farm on Nøtterøy in 1851.
After he was confirmed, Tollefsen went to sea. Later he took the mate's and skipper's courses at the Tønsberg Seamen's School (Norwegian: Tønsberg Sjømannsskole). He graduated in 1864 and was hired by Gustav Conrad Hansen's newly established shipping company.
Tollefsen was employed by Hansen's shipping company throughout his professional career.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Even Tollefsen” as norwegian Sea Captain and Inventor. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as norwegian Sea Captain and Inventor. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q11968186. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1897, 1806 and 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “Even Tollefsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.