IIJOHN ERICSSON
Born in Nordmark, Sweden, 1803Died in New York City, 1889
High up in the dark forests of Wermland, an ancient division of Sweden, where deep cold lakes feed the great rivers with clear water and send them down the mountains to the sea, was born, in the year 1803, a baby, John Ericsson, who in the years that followed made for himself a name which brought glory to the United States, the land of his adoption, and undying fame to the country of his birth.
There were few comforts or pleasures waiting to welcome young Ericsson into the world. The little village where he was born rested high in the mountains within six degrees of the Arctic Circle. All around were dark and gloomy forests, filled with strange legends and tales of ancient heroes, handed down from grandfather to father and from father to son. The hard thin soil of the mountains was unfit for cultivation, and it was difficult for the people of the forest villages to live on the poor crops which they produced in the few acres hewn from the forests.
But down beneath the tree-roots, deep-lying in the mountain-sides, were vast deposits of iron ore, renowned throughout the world as the material of the finest cutlery. So the deep iron-mines gave to theinhabitants of these mountain villages a hard-earned living which tempered their own spirits with that same quality which the Swedish iron developed in the blade of steel.
Olaf Ericsson, the father of John, was part owner of a small iron-mine and also superintendent of an iron-works, and so the small boy, with few playmates and none of the school advantages of the American lad of the present day, found his play and early education in the machinery at the mine and foundry. He was an industrious boy, and he was quick to discover the interest and inspiration of the things which surrounded him. All day, with pieces of paper, a pencil, and some drawing-tools which he had made for himself, he studied the principles of the machines and drew clear designs of them to illustrate their construction.
When John was eleven years old, his father left the mining village of Langbanshyttan and took with him his wife and his three children: John, Nils, a year older than John, and a sister, the oldest of the three. For many years the Swedish Government had considered the building of a great ship-canal which would open navigation across the Swedish peninsular, and it was as foreman of this project that Olaf Ericsson settled his family at Forsvik, a hundred miles from the old mountain home.
J. Ericsson (signature)
J. Ericsson (signature)
J. Ericsson (signature)
The mechanical features of this great engineering work filled young Ericsson with wonder and enthusiasm, and in his eagerness to obtain knowledge, in order that he too might participate, he sought information and education from everyone who had the timeand inclination to help him. From a boarder in his father’s household John learned to draw maps and plans with skill and accuracy. A friendly professor aided his architectural drawing, and one winter he studied chemistry and learned to make his own inks and colors with a few pennies’ worth of chemicals bought from the town druggist. In these years he also learned the French language, Latin, and grammar; a fine foundation which enabled him in after years to express himself in speech and writing with a clearness and exactness that proved of immeasurable assistance to him.
At the age of twelve the boy had so progressed in his studies that he was commissioned to make some drawings for the canal company; and in the following year he became assistant leveler, and a year later, leveler. In this work he was required to make plans and calculations for the canal, and had a monthly salary, quarters, and traveling expenses. Undoubtedly John possessed unusual ability, but this extraordinary promotion of so young a boy must in large measure have been the result of his conscientious devotion to his studies and his enthusiasm and ambition in his work.
In his leisure hours the boy found pleasure in building small working models of machinery, and among these was a model of a saw-mill which many years later he counted as the first in the long list of celebrated inventions which had brought him fame and prosperity. This model was built entirely of wood, with the exception of the band-saw, which was filedout by hand from a broken watch-spring and was operated by a crank cast from an old tin spoon. A cord served for the driving-band. No detail was omitted, and when water was turned into the miniature waterwheel, the machinery operated perfectly. With similar ingenuity he made for himself draughtsman’s compasses, from birchwood and broken needles; and from the hairs in an old fur garment of his mother’s he laboriously fashioned brushes with which to apply colors, also of his own making, to his drawings.
But now the father’s health broke beneath the weight of his work; the small earnings which supported the family dwindled, and each year that went by gave to the growing boys added responsibilities. In 1820 John realized that the time had come for him to take his own path and begin actively to build for his future. His father had died in the previous year and his mother and sister were supporting themselves by taking as boarders the workers on the canal. It was necessary that he also should contribute to their comfort.
Realizing the physical and moral value of military training, young Ericsson joined the Swedish army. He was now seventeen, a fine powerful fellow with smooth active muscles, a clear eye, and a well-trained brain. When he was eighteen there were few, if any, of his fellows who could match him in feats of strength or agility, and on one occasion he is said to have lifted a cannon weighing over six hundred pounds.
Advancement came rapidly, and he was soon recognized as an expert artillery draughtsman and anexpert in the science of artillery, a branch of the service in which he had begun to specialize. It will be interesting to see how this early army experience gave to Ericsson knowledge which in later life brought him his greatest fame and enabled him to turn the tide of history and hold nations attentive before his words.
The stirring mind of the young man now yearned for a wider horizon than the Swedish army afforded, and for a greater opportunity than his own country presented. For several years he had been experimenting with a new type of engine by which he hoped to obtain greater horse-power with economy of fuel. England seemed to offer the opportunity, and in 1826 he left his native land and took up his residence in London.
Ericsson went to England at the opening of an engineering era. The employment of steam as a motive power was in its infancy. Travel by sea was entirely by ships; on land the stage-coach and canal-boat furnished the only means of transportation. The steam-engine was an undeveloped toy of science. Electricity in its industrial application was unknown.
Forming a business partnership with an English machine manufacturer, John Braithwaite, under the firm name of Ericsson and Braithwaite, Ericsson immediately turned his tremendous faculties to various engineering improvements and inventions. First a gas-engine occupied his interest; then he turned to his former conception of a “flame-engine,” in which, by putting the actual fire directly under the piston, the expanding air would supply the motor power. In 1828he built and put into operation in a tin-mine in Cornwall a water-pump driven by compressed air—an invention on which he later based his claim as inventor of a machine utilizing compressed air for transmitting power.
It was in the year 1819 that the Atlantic was for the first time crossed by a steam vessel, the United States ship Savannah, and this revolutionizing event stimulated Ericsson to new endeavors. In the months following he produced a number of important improvements by which smaller and lighter boilers were made possible by increasing the heat, and hence the power, of the fire by forced draught, as well as many other radical improvements in steam-engines and boiler-construction. Of these he claims particularly the credit of the invention of “surface condensation applied to steam navigation.”
The first steam fire-engine—an apparatus which to-day constitutes perhaps the most important feature of a city’s fire department—was invented and built by Ericsson in 1829. Previously, and as a matter of fact for years afterward, hand-operated engines, manned by crews of volunteer firemen, fought the fires which so frequently destroyed vast sections of the wood-constructed cities of those early days. It is not surprising that this valuable invention did not receive immediate recognition, for inventors rarely obtain such recognition from the people whom their inventions benefit. In fact, Ericsson’s portable steam fire-engine was actually condemned as an impracticable contrivance that could serve no useful purpose.
To-day we travel thousands of miles by railroad; a hundred years ago our great-great-grandfathers traveled by horse-drawn coaches. Where we may now speed a mile a minute behind a giant steam locomotive, they were content with what seemed to them the tremendous speed of eleven miles an hour. But all things change. There are always leaders in the world’s progress. Of these leaders was John Ericsson. Travel had been a luxury of the rich; the invention of the steam locomotive made fast and economical travel possible to the poor as well.
In 1829 a prize of two thousand five hundred dollars was offered for the best steam locomotive which could draw a weight of twenty tons at the rate of ten miles an hour. Ericsson had never built a locomotive, but he entered the contest. His greatest competitor was George Stephenson, who for several years had built small locomotives for use in coal mines.
On the great day of the trial thousands of people thronged the track to witness the novel sight. Never in the world’s history had there been a public experiment so momentous, unless we except the journey of the American inventor’s steamship, the Clermont, on her first historic progress up the Hudson River.
The locomotive entered in the contest by Stephenson was named the Rocket, a strong well-built engine that ultimately was awarded the prize. But although he was not the winner in this great competition, to Ericsson belongs great credit, for his locomotive, the Novelty, passed the Rocket at the amazing speed, for those days, of thirty miles an hour, and failed to winthe prize only because of certain defects in its construction which caused it to break down before the goal was reached.
Ericsson was twenty-six years old when he built the Novelty. Already he had contributed many useful inventions to the world. But his greatest triumphs were still to come. He had been beaten fairly and squarely by Stephenson, but his was not the spirit that is easily subdued. Ericsson, like the hero of Greek mythology, rose the stronger each time an adversary cast him to the earth.
In 1836 he married a nineteen-year-old English girl, Amelia Byam, granddaughter of Sir Charles Byam, some time British Commissioner for Antigua.
For a short time he devoted himself to the perfection of a hot-air engine, and a sounding device by which ships might ascertain the depth of the water over which they were passing. Then he turned to a new activity. The result was revolutionary. What he had almost accomplished in the field of land-transportation with the Novelty, he now actually achieved in steam-navigation on the sea. To Ericsson should be credited the perfection and application of the screw for the propulsion of steam-driven vessels.
Up to the dawn of the nineteenth century the sailing-ship had ruled the seas. And even until the middle of that century the fast clippers, with their towers of widespread canvas, had held supreme domination over the world’s waterways. But in the year 1835 Ericsson designed a rotary propeller driven by a steam-engine, which marked the beginning of the endof sailing days. The steam-engine, first placed in a ship by Robert Fulton, the American inventor, was no novelty, but it had been used only to propel vessels by means of paddle-wheels attached to each side of the vessels, huge cumbersome contrivances, which were easily damaged by heavy seas and which on ships of war afforded easy targets for the enemy.
The screw of Ericsson’s was designed to operate underneath the stern of the vessel, under water and just forward of the rudder, exactly as it is placed to-day. To test this new invention Ericsson built a small vessel, the Francis B. Ogden, which was launched in the Thames River in the spring of 1837. The experiment was a great success and a speed of over ten miles an hour was attained, to the wonder of the stolid English boatmen who watched in amazement this strange ship move rapidly through the water with no visible means of propulsion.
Later in the summer Ericsson invited the Lords of the British Admiralty to inspect his steamship, and even conducted them on a trial trip on the Thames; but the amazing performance of the Ogden created but little interest in the minds of the British officials, who dismissed the affair as an “interesting experiment.”
But Ericsson had a friend who stood him in good stead. This friend was an American, Francis B. Ogden, our counsul at Liverpool, after whom Ericsson’s first vessel was named. Ogden was not an engineer, but he recognized in the Swedish inventor a man of sincerity and genius, and to his friendship Ericsson owed much in the way of advice and assistance.
In 1838 Ericsson built and launched a larger steamship, the Robert F. Stockton which sailed from Gravesend, England, on April 13, 1839, and made a successful passage to New York City, the first screw-driven steamship ever to cross the Atlantic. As the result of this remarkable achievement Ericsson was assured that the government of the United States would try out his invention on a large scale, and persuaded him to go to America.
Ericsson was not reluctant. For years he had struggled under the old-world conservatism. With his energy and ambition, he realized that only in the great land of opportunity beyond the sea could lie his hope of recognition. In November, 1839, he sailed for the United States.
There were no steam vessels in our navy when Ericsson reached our shores, and it was not until 1842 that the building of the Princeton gave him the opportunity to display his great invention. The Princeton was a small iron warship of six hundred tons, and to her construction Ericsson contributed not only his screw-propeller, but also a new construction for the gun-carriage, and, of even greater importance, a cannon reinforced by steel hoops shrunk on to the breech of the gun. This reinforcing of the breech of a cannon may be said to have established the recognized construction of the modern high-power naval guns of the present day.
The Princeton marked a new advance in naval construction. Her speed, the location of her machinery below the water-line and hence out of dangerfrom an enemy’s guns, her novel screw-propulsion, and her powerful armament made her the centre, not only of national, but of world interest.
For a number of years following, Ericsson continued his development of the science of naval engineering, and in 1843 applied for the first time twin-screw engines to the steamship Marmora. During these years recognition began to bring to the great inventor the financial rewards which he had long deserved. In the year 1844 his receipts from his inventions and contracts amounted to almost $40,000, and the following year he received almost $85,000. But the road to wealth and glory contains many obstacles, and the successes that crowned the work of these few years were in a large measure balanced by reverses, although in the end triumph out-balanced all.
For several years Ericsson devoted his energies to the perfection of a model type of warship, but his untiring efforts received scant recognition from the government. October 28, 1848, was, however, a day memorable, not only in the life of Ericsson, but in the history of the United States, for on that day he became a naturalized citizen. Born in a foreign land, a sojourner in European countries, it was but natural that the Swedish genius should find in this young nation of opportunity the field which he needed for the expression of his wonderful faculties. By his naturalization, Ericsson brought to the United States the fine inheritance of an ancient nation, and infused into the blood of the new republic additional strength and virility. Save for the nativeIndian, there is no true American; but in the mingled blood of the people of many lands may be found to-day a race that combines the best of the nations of the earth, a composite people, free, prosperous, and masters of their own glorious destiny.
For many years Ericsson had held faith in the theory of a hot-air engine in which heated air would produce the effect of steam, but with greater economy. With characteristic confidence he carried his experiments to their completion, and expended practically his entire capital on the necessary models and machines which the working-out of his plans required. Success crowned his efforts, and the hot-air, or caloric, engine was generally conceded to be a success.
As the result of these experiments a number of New York capitalists supplied the necessary money to construct a large steamship, the paddle-wheels of which were operated by caloric engines designed by Ericsson. The vessel was named after the inventor and was a most novel and radical departure from any vessel up to that time designed. Her cost exceeded half a million dollars: an investment which showed the high esteem in which her designer was held. The Ericsson was launched in September, 1852, and made her trial trip on January 4, 1853. Never had so strong or fine a ship been built; the newspapers of the day were filled with praise, and her designer received from every quarter the most extravagant congratulations for the mechanical marvel which he had created.
But unexpected disaster destroyed in a few seconds the product of these months of thought and energy.Within a few weeks of her launching the Ericsson encountered a tornado, and capsized and sank a few miles off New York Light. Although she was believed by many to mark the end of the use of steam-power and the beginning of a new era of hot-air dynamics, it is now recognized that this invention reached its maximum development in the Ericsson; and it is in connection with a later and far greater invention that history has accorded recognition to the designer’s great mechanical genius.
Long before Ericsson left England he had thought out the plans for a strange kind of vessel, protected with iron, which would be able to fight and defeat any warship of any size. In 1854, the year in which he perfected the plan for his new type of warship, the navies of all the great nations were composed, in large part, of huge wooden vessels, usually sailing-ships, but a few combining sails and steam. For a number of years the use of iron-plating, or armor, on the sides of battleships had been discussed, and in 1845 R. L. Stevens, an American engineer, actually began the construction of a vessel, or “floating battery,” encased in metal.
To France however, probably belongs the credit for the construction of the first ironclads, consisting of these floating batteries, the Lave, Devastation, and Tonnante, protected by 4.25-inch iron plates, which were used during the Crimean War. The following year France began the construction of four ironclad steam frigates, and England immediately followed, with the construction of a number of similar vessels.
But the warship of John Ericsson in no way resembled the huge ironclads of France or England. With characteristic disregard for precedent he designed a ship which rested so low in the water that only about three feet of its sides would be exposed. The sides and deck were protected by heavy plates of iron, and in the centre of the deck was a circular heavily armored turret which revolved in either direction and contained powerful guns. These vessels, or monitors, as Ericsson named them, were to be propelled by steam. The particular advantages of the type were that so little of the craft showed above the water that it afforded an exceedingly small target to an enemy; that the heavy plating protected it from hostile shot, and the revolving target enabled the crew to fire in any direction without manœuvring the vessel, while such shot as might strike the turret would glance harmlessly from its circular side.
During the Crimean War Ericsson offered the plans for this remarkable vessel to the French Emperor; but they were politely declined as impractical in much the same way in which, some years earlier, the British Admiralty had declined to consider the screw-propeller as little more than an amusing experiment.
When war was declared in 1861 between the Northern States and the Confederate States of the South, Ericsson was fifty-eight years old. In this national calamity in which brother was armed against brother, and the fate of the country seemed hanging by a thread, Ericsson unhesitatingly cast himself with those who sought the preservation of the Union andthe abolition of slavery from the United States. Never before had his adopted country needed so vitally his tremendous services. With superb health derived from a normal life of conservative habits, and a brain trained by long years of engineering experiment, Ericsson found himself ready and able to meet the call for his greatest service to the nation.
The United States navy at the beginning of the war was composed entirely of wooden vessels. Early in 1861 the Confederates began the construction of a floating battery heavily armored with iron. For this purpose the old United States frigate Merrimac, which had been burned and sunk in the Norfolk Navy Yard, was raised, and the work of encasing her with armor plates was begun.
Meanwhile, in the North, Congress had called for proposals for ironclad steam vessels, and less than a month later, Ericsson addressed to President Lincoln a letter in which he offered to submit the plans of a monitor, and described the advantages of its unique design. On September 13, Ericsson went to Washington and personally laid before the Navy Department his plans and received a contract to proceed with the construction of the Monitor.
The keel was laid on October 25, and on January 30, she slid down the ways into the water. A month later she was commissioned. The Monitor was 172 feet in length and displaced 776 tons. In the centre of her low flat deck was the revolving turret, twenty feet in diameter, protected by eight inches of iron-plating. Two heavy guns were mounted in the turret. Thevessel was operated entirely by steam-engines, placed well below the water-line, which propelled a screw beneath the overhanging stern.
Rushed to completion in the brief period of three months, the Monitor was barely commissioned in time to render, at Hampton Roads, the tremendous service which in a few brief hours revolutionized naval warfare, made obsolete the navies of the world, rescued the Union navy from crushing disaster, and immortalized the name of John Ericsson, her designer and constructor.
The Monitor had been intended to serve with Admiral Farragut’s fleet at New Orleans, but a crisis nearer at hand made a sudden change of plans necessary. The Monitor left New York on the afternoon of March 6, 1862, under command of Lieutenant John L. Worden, U.S.N., and arrived at Hampton Roads on the evening of March 8, after a stormy passage.
Meanwhile the armored Confederate ram Merrimac had created havoc with the great wooden warships of the Federal navy. On the seventh, the Merrimac had rammed and sunk the frigate Cumberland, and then destroyed the Congress, vessels powerless to inflict injury on the iron sides of the Confederate ram. The tall frigates, St. Lawrence, Roanoke, and Minnesota, powerless to resist or to escape, awaited their inevitable destruction on the following day.
But on that eventful morning, as the Merrimac steamed out into the stream to complete her work, which would break the blockade the Federal forces had established, the Monitor glided out from underthe stern of the Minnesota, looking for all the world like “a barrel-head afloat with a cheese-box on top of it.”
For four hours these two strange vessels fought this greatest duel of naval history, which, on the ships and the shores, was watched by the anxious eyes of soldiers and sailors of North and South to whom the outcome was of such tremendous import. Manœuvring like boxers, the two vessels circled each other, black smoke pouring from their low funnels and the red flame of the great guns spurting from the gun-ports. As she had rammed the Cumberland, so did the Merrimac endeavor to crush the Monitor with her ram; but the Monitor either slipped past her heavier and more ungainly adversary or allowed the Merrimac to push her aside. Round and round the circular turret swung, turning away in order to load the two guns which protruded, and then swinging back to deliver a volley of metal against the plated sloping side of the Merrimac.
Unable to damage the Monitor and herself severely pounded by the forty-one shots which the Monitor had fired, the Merrimac finally withdrew, leaving the strange warship of the Swedish-American inventor the victor. The Minnesota, the Roanoke, and the St. Lawrence were saved. The blockade remained unbroken.
In the words of a Confederate who witnessed the battle, “The Monitor was by immense odds the most formidable vessel of war on this planet.”
During the following years of the war, Ericssondevoted his vast energies to the service of his country, and at great financial loss and immeasurable personal sacrifice constructed a large number of vessels of the Monitor type for the navy.
With the close of the war Ericsson continued the marvelous series of inventions which he had given to the world. For a number of years he gave his best thought to the building and mounting of heavy guns; and later he turned his energies to the construction of a practical submarine torpedo. In these later experiments he personally invested over a hundred thousand dollars.
From the United States and foreign countries came recognition of his services to the world. In 1866 the Department of State offered him the appointment of Commissioner to the Universal Exposition at Paris. The previous year he had received a resolution of thanks from the Swedish Parliament. Among other honors conferred upon him were his election to the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, honorary memberships in the Royal Military Academy of Science of Stockholm and the Royal Military Academy of Sweden, a joint resolution of thanks from the United States Congress, a resolution from the State of New York, the Rumford gold and silver medals, and a gold medal from the Society of Iron Masters of Sweden. In 1863 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Wesleyan University; and later he was made a Knight Commander with the Grand Cross of the order of the North Star and a Commander of St. Olaf, two Swedish honors. In later years came many otherdistinctions, not only from the United States and Sweden, but from Denmark, Spain, and Austria.
In these later years came also many demands on Ericsson’s generosity, and to the near members of his family, and even to his most distant relatives, he invariably responded with a substantial gift. Realizing the tremendous value of education, he gave freely when money was needed to provide schooling for the children of members of his family whom he had never seen. But these benefactions to relatives and friends were invariably made only when Ericsson believed in the true need and the sincerity of the request. Out of the considerable income which came to him from his inventions in later years he gave also with a liberal hand whenever public or private distress was brought to his attention.
Ericsson’s own wants were few. His temperate habits, his love of physical exercise, and his simple tastes made but slender demands on his income. Vigorous by inheritance, and possessing a fine physique from his early activities, he preserved his splendid vigor throughout his long life. Rarely has been given to the world a finer example of health and character contributing to a career of splendid usefulness.
On the eighth of March, 1889, John Ericsson died in his New York house, where for a quarter of a century he had lived his active and solitary existence. The significance of his death was recognized, not only by his native Sweden and the United States, the land of his adoption, but by the entire civilized world, in which his inventions had brought such revolutionizingchanges. But the story of his achievements can never die, and in the history of his useful life is an inspiration to every succeeding generation to whom the United States unfolds an ever-increasing opportunity.