u6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



locomotive traction should be adopted for the railway between 

 Liverpool and Manchester, a prize of 500 was offered for the best 

 locomotive. Although five months were given the competitors 

 in which to prepare themselves, Ericsson did not learn of the 

 offer till within seven weeks of the day of trial. Stephenson 

 brought out his " Rocket " engine, with every appointment per- 

 fect and tested. Ericsson produced his " Novelty," graceful in 

 design and structure, and with every part planned on sound prin- 

 ciples, but built in haste and untested. It suffered two break- 

 downs in the trial, caused by undetected faults in workmanship ; 

 but not before it had passed the " Rocket " and reached a speed of 

 thirty-two miles an hour. Ericsson withdrew it in disgust, and 

 the prize went to Stephenson. But every one admired the beauty 

 of the " Novelty " ; the judges spoke of its appearance as being very 

 much in its favor, and commended the ingenuity with which the 

 machinery was so contrived as to work out of sight, and the com- 

 pactness of its form ; and John Scott Russell, the eminent English 

 engineer, wrote in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1840 that " the 

 ( Novelty ' had to be withdrawn through a series of unfortunate 

 accidents which had no reference to the character or capabilities 

 of the engine. And we well recollect that it made a profound 

 impression on the public mind at the time. On the first day of 

 the trial it went twenty-eight miles an hour (without any at- 

 tached load), and did one mile in seven seconds under two min- 

 utes/' Two other elegant locomotives were built by Ericsson, 

 but they failed to give entire satisfaction in the working, and this 

 field of construction was left to Stephenson. 



In 1830 Captain Ericsson devised the centrifugal fan blower 

 which afterward came into general use on our river steamers ; in 

 1834 he took out a patent for a deep-sea lead, on a principle simi- 

 lar to the one employed in a lead designed by Sir William Thom- 

 son. He received a prize from the London Society of Arts for a 

 hydrostatic weighing machine. He exhibited at the Interna- 

 tional Exhibition of 1852, and received a medal for them, an in- 

 strument to measure distances at sea ; an alarm barometer which 

 sounded a gong in warning of approaching storms; and a py- 

 rometer which measured temperatures up to the boiling point of 

 iron. He invented an instrument for measuring the compressi- 

 bility of water ; methods of propelling boats on canals, one of 

 which has been applied to the heavy grades of Swiss mountain 

 railroads ; a water meter, a centrifugal pump, a file cutting ma- 

 chine, an apparatus for making salt from brine, and numerous 

 applications to the steam engine, many of which came into use, 

 while others were abandoned. He experimented with super- 

 heated steam ; and Mr. Church says that he designed more than 

 five hundred steam engines. 



