Inventors

by Philip Gengembre Hubert

Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air.
(Patented as a pumping-engine, 1880.)

Before leaving this question of heat-engines and passing to the more important inventions by which Ericsson will be remembered, it may be as well to say a few words concerning the solar-engines to which he devoted many years' time, and one of which I saw in operation in the back yard of the pleasant old house in Beach Street, opposite the freight depot of the Hudson River Railroad. This house, by the way, which Ericsson occupied for nearly forty years, faced on St. John's Park, the pleasant square which was afterward filled up by the railroad company. Toward the last years of Ericsson's life the neighborhood became anything but a pleasant one to live in; it was dirty and noisy. Nevertheless Ericsson refused to move. Perhaps the unpleasantness of the surroundings made him the recluse he was. It is not surprising that he should have been attracted by the possibility of obtaining power from the heat of the sun. In an early pamphlet on the subject he says: "There is a rainless region extending from the northwestern coast of Africa to Mongolia, nine thousand miles in length and nearly one thousand miles wide. In the Western Hemisphere, Lower California, the table-lands of Guatemala, and the west coast of South America, for a distance of more than two thousand miles, suffer from a continuous radiant heat." Ericsson estimated that the mechanical power that would result from utilizing the solar heat on a strip of land a single mile wide and eight thousand miles long would suffice to keep twenty-two million solar-engines, of one hundred horse-power each, going nine hours a day. He believed that with the exhaustion of European coal-fields the day for the solar-engine would come, and that those countries which possessed unfailing sunshine, such as Egypt, would displace England, France, and Germany as the manufacturing powers of the world, for the European would have to move his machinery to the borders of the Nile. By concentrating the rays of the sun upon a small copper boiler filled with air Ericsson was enabled to work a little motor, and for some years he also attempted to produce steam by means of heat from the sun. He was not successful, however, in making anything of commercial value in this direction, and so far as I have been able to learn none of the tropical countries invited by him to take up the problem for its own benefit responded to the invitation.

Ericsson's studies and improvements of the screw as a means of propelling boats began in England. A model boat, two feet long, fitted up with two screws, was launched in a London bath-house, and, supplied by steam from a boiler placed at the side of the tank, was sent around at a speed estimated at six miles an hour. Ericsson was so delighted with it that he built a boat eight feet by forty, armed with two propellers, in the hope that the British Admiralty might adopt the invention. This boat went through the water at the rate of ten miles an hour, or seven miles an hour towing a schooner of one hundred and forty tons burden. He invited the Admiralty to see the work of his screw. Steaming up to Somerset House with his little vessel, Ericsson took the Admiralty barge in tow, to the wonder of the watermen, who could make nothing of the novel craft with no apparent means of propulsion. The British Admiralty, however, was not easily convinced. These wiseacres said nothing, but Ericsson professed to have heard that their verdict was against him because one of the authorities of the board decided that "even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel it would be found altogether useless in practice, because the power, being applied to the stern, it would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer."

This official blindness cost England the services of the inventor. The United States happened to have as consul in Liverpool at that day (1837) Mr. Francis B. Ogden, a pioneer in steam navigation on the Ohio River. Ogden saw Ericsson's invention and introduced him to Captain Robert F. Stockton, of the United States Navy. With Stockton, seeing was believing, and when he returned from a trip on Ericsson's boat, he exclaimed: "I do not want the opinion of your scientific men. What I have seen to-day satisfies me." Before the vessel had completed her trip, Ericsson received from Stockton an order for two boats. Upon Stockton's assurance that the United States would try his propeller upon a large scale, Ericsson closed up his affairs in England and embarked for the United States. Through the good offices of Stockton, but after considerable delay, a vessel called the Princeton was ordered and completed. She carried a number of radical improvements destined to make a revolution in naval warfare. The boilers and engines were below the waterline, out of the way of shot and shell. The smoke-stack was a telescopic affair, replacing the tall pipe that formed so conspicuous a target upon the old boats. Centrifugal blowers in the hold, worked by separate engines, secured increased draught for the furnaces. The Princeton was a wonder, and everyone was ready to praise the inventive genius of Ericsson and the daring of Captain Stockton in adopting so many radical novelties. An entry in the diary of John Quincy Adams, dated February 28, 1844, tells the sad story of the public exhibition of the Princeton at Washington:

"I went into the chamber of the Committee of Manufactures and wrote there till six. Dined with Mr. Grinnell and Mr. Winthrop. While we were at dinner John Barney burst into the chamber, rushed up to General Scott and told him, with groans, that the President wished to see him; that the great gun on board the Princeton had burst and killed the Secretary of State, Upshur; the Secretary of the Navy, T.W. Gilmer; Captain Beverly Kennon, Virgil Maxey, a Colonel Gardiner, of New York, a colored servant of the President, and desperately wounded several of the crew."

So tragic an introduction was not needed to direct public attention to the Princeton. Ericsson had placed the United States at the head of naval powers in the application of steam-power to warfare. He had made the experiment of the Princeton at a great cost to himself, and two years of concentrated effort had been devoted to the service of the Government. For his time, labor, and necessary expenditures he rendered a bill of $15,000, leaving the question of what, if anything, should be charged for his patent rights entirely to the discretion and generosity of the Government. The bill was refused payment by the Navy Department because of its limited discretion. Ericsson went to Congress with it, but a dozen years passed without the slightest progress toward a settlement. A court of claims rendered a unanimous decree in his favor, but Congress, to which the bill was again sent, failed to make an appropriation, and there the matter has remained, notwithstanding the brilliant services since rendered to this country by the inventor.

Various nations claim the invention of the screw as applied to boats. At Trieste and at Vienna stand statues erected to Joseph Ressel, for whom the Austrians lay claim. Commodore Stevens, of New Jersey, is also said by Professor Thurston to have built and worked a screw-propeller on the Hudson in 1812. Whatever may be the final decision as to Ericsson's claim in this matter, there can be no doubt as to the value of the services he rendered in building the Monitor. The suggestion of the Monitor was first made in a communication from Ericsson to Napoleon III., dated New York, September, 1854. This paper contained a description of an iron-clad vessel surmounted by a cupola substantially as in the Monitor as finally built. The emperor, through General Favre, acknowledged the communication. Favre wrote: "The emperor has himself examined with the greatest care the new system of naval attack which you have communicated to him. His Majesty charges me with the honor of informing you that he has found your ideas very ingenious and worthy of the celebrated name of their author." For eight years Ericsson continued working upon his idea of a revolving cupola or turret upon an iron-clad raft, but found no opportunity to test the practical value of the device. His time finally came when, in 1861, the Navy Department appointed a board to examine plans for iron-clads. The board consisted of Commodores Joseph Smith, Hiram Paulding, and Charles H. Davis. Ericsson, having learned to distrust his own powers as a business agent, engaged the assistance of C. S. Bushnell, a Connecticut man of some wealth, who went to Washington and presented the designs of the Monitor to the board.

Colonel W.C. Church, Ericsson's biographer, who has just been honored by Sweden for his publications upon the life of the inventor, tells an interesting story of the negotiations concerning the vessel which was to render such signal services to the country. Bushnell could make no headway with the board and decided that Ericsson's presence in Washington was necessary. But the inventor was then, as during his whole life, averse to any self-advertisement, and preferred his workshop to any place on earth. But as he possessed a sort of rude eloquence due to enthusiasm, Bushnell got him to Washington by subterfuge. He was told that the board approved his plans for an iron-clad and that it would be necessary for him to go to the capital and complete the contract. Presenting himself before the board, what was his astonishment to find that he was not only an unexpected but apparently an unwelcome visitor. He was not long in doubt as to the meaning of this reception. To his indignation and astonishment he was informed that the plan of a vessel submitted by him had already been rejected. His first impulse was to withdraw at once. Mastering his anger, however, he inquired the reason for this decision. Commodore Smith explained that the vessel had not sufficient stability; in other words, it would be liable to upset. Captain Ericsson was too experienced a naval designer to have overlooked this point, and in a lucid explanation put his views before the board, winding up with the declaration: "Gentlemen, after what I have said, I consider it to be your duty to the country to give me an order to build the vessel before I leave this room."