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 time and 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 filed out 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 an expert 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 1828 he 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.