190 



SCIEN-CE.rJAM > 



[Vol. XIII. No. 319 



gineers ; the following year, a leveller on the canal. At seventeen,.. ■sJ:e^m-engine,,aTicl a famous system of artificial draught for steam- 

 Ericsson entered the army as an ensign, and rapidly reached a bottersj dispensing with huge smoke-stacks, and economizing fuel, 

 lieutenancy in consequence of his beautiful military maps, which To the steamship "Victory," in 1828, he applied the principle of 

 had attracted the special attention of King Charles John (Berna- condensing steam and returning the water to the boiler ; and four 

 dotte). years later he gave to the " Corsair " the centrifugal fan-blowers 



ERICSSON, 1854. 



When about twenty-two years old, Lieut. Ericsson constructed a 

 flame-engine of 10 horse-power, and journeyed to London in 1826, 

 on leave, to introduce it. Once there, he resigned his commission. 

 The resignation was accepted, but first he was promoted to a 

 captaincy. He has never returned to his native country, but from 

 it has received many honors and decorations ; while in 1867 a great 

 granite monument, quarried by the unpaid labor of the miners. 



now generally used in American steam-vessels. In 1830 he intro- 

 duced in the locomotives " King William " and " Adelaide " the 

 link motion for reversing steam-engines. In 1834 he superheated 

 steam in an engine on the Regent's Canal Basin. 



In 1829 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway had offered a prize 

 for competing locomotives. Ericsson planned and hurried to com- 

 pletion an engine, the " Novelty," in seven weeks. The London 



some of whom had worked for his father, was set up with gala 

 festivities in front of his mansion, inscribed, " John Ericsson was 

 born here in 1803." It is under this stone that his last resting- 

 place may be, though at this writing nothing definite can be said. 



During the next few years, Ericsson produced about forty ma- 

 chines. They included a file-cutting device, an instrument for 

 taking soundings (still in use), a hydrostatic weighing-machine, an 

 apparatus for making salt from brine, a pumping-engine, a rotary 



Times of Oct. 8, 1829, said that in speed it " far excelled " all com- 

 petitors. It shot along the line at the amazing rate of thirty miles 

 an hour ; but Stephenson's " Rocket " proved superior in point of 

 traction. Ericsson in 1829, nearly threescore years ago, con- 

 structed a steam fire-engine, employed in putting out a fire in the 

 Arg^'le Rooms, which was objected to as throwing too much 

 water. 



So much for his progress in England. For Ericsson's removal to 



