Inventors Part 7

FACSIMILE GOLD.]

If Goodyear had been a man of business instincts and habits, the years following the completion of his great work might have brought him an immense fortune; but everywhere he seems to have been unfortunate in protecting his rights. In France and England he lost his patent rights by technical defects. In the latter country another man, who had received a copy of the American patent, actually applied and obtained the English rights in his own name. Goodyear, however, obtained the great council medal at the London Exhibition of 1851, a grand medal at Paris, in 1855, and later the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. In this country he was scarcely less unfortunate. His patents were infringed right and left, he was cheated by business a.s.sociates and plundered of the profits of his invention. The United States Commissioner of Patents, in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:

"No inventor, probably, has ever been so hara.s.sed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious cla.s.s of infringers known in the parlance of the world as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenceless rights has unquestionably amounted to millions."

Goodyear died in New York in July, 1860, worn out with work and disappointment. Neither Europe nor America seemed disposed to accord him any reward or credit for having made one of the greatest discoveries of the time. Notwithstanding his invention, which has made millions for those engaged in working it, he died insolvent, and left his family heavily in debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to procure from Congress an extension of his patent for the benefit of his family and creditors. The opposition of the men who had grown rich and powerful by successfully infringing his rights prevented that august body from doing justice in the matter and the effort came to nothing.

VII.

JOHN ERICSSON.

Captain John Ericsson, although not by birth an American, rendered such signal services to this country and lived here for so many years that we may fairly consider him in the light of an American inventor. The inventions to which he devoted the best years of his life were made in this country. He loved America, he died here, and though his ashes have been sent back to Sweden, the world of Europe, in common with ourselves, probably thinks of Ericsson as an American.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Ericsson.]

By the roadside near a mountain hamlet of Central Sweden stands a pyramid of iron cast from ore dug from the adjacent mines and set upon a base of granite quarried from the hills which overlook the valley. This monument bears the information that two brothers, Nils Ericsson and John Ericsson, were born in a miner's hut at that place, respectively, January 31, 1802, and July 31, 1803. Nils Ericsson was a man of unusual distinction, who held high position in Sweden as engineer of the ca.n.a.ls and railroads of the kingdom. The name of his brother is known the world over. These two notable Swedes were sons of Olof Ericsson, a Swedish miner. Poverty was one of the bits of good fortune that fell to the lot of the two boys, and among John's earliest recollections is that of the seizure of their household effects by the sheriff. The mother was a woman of intelligence and somewhat acquainted with the literature of her time. In boyhood John Ericsson worked in the iron mines of Central Sweden. Machinery was his first love and his last. Before he was eleven years old, during the winter of 1813, he had produced a miniature saw-mill of ingenious construction, and had planned a pumping-engine designed to keep the mines free from water. The frame of the saw-mill was of wood; the saw-blade was made from a watch-spring and was moved by a crank made from a broken tin spoon. A file, borrowed from a neighboring blacksmith, a gimlet, and a jack-knife were the only tools used in this work. His pumping-engine was a more ambitious affair, to be operated by a wind-mill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Ericsson's Birthplace and Monument.]

The family then lived in the wilderness, surrounded by a pine forest, where Ericsson's father was engaged in selecting timber for the lock-gates of a ca.n.a.l. A quill and a pencil were the boy's tools in the way of drawing materials. He made compa.s.ses of birch wood. A pair of steel tweezers were converted into a drawing-pen. Ericsson had never seen a wind-mill, but following as well as he could the description of those who had, he succeeded in constructing on paper the mechanism connecting the crank of a wind-mill with the pump-lever. The plan, conceived and executed under such circ.u.mstances by a mere boy, attracted the attention of Count Platen, president of the Gotha Ship Ca.n.a.l, on which Ericsson's father was employed, and when Ericsson was twelve years old he was made a member of the surveying party carrying out the ca.n.a.l work and put in charge of a section. Six hundred of the royal troops looked for directions in their daily work to this boy, one of his attendants being a man who followed him with a stool, upon which he stood to use the surveying instruments. The amus.e.m.e.nts of this boy engineer, even at the age of fifteen, are indicated by a portfolio of drawings made in his leisure moments, giving maps of the most important parts of the ca.n.a.l, three hundred miles in length, and showing all the machinery used in its construction. His precocity was, however, the normal and healthy development of a mind as fond of mechanical principles as Raphael was of color.

It was in 1811 that Ericsson made his first scale drawing of the famous Sunderland Iron Bridge, and from that time on his career in Sweden was a brilliant one. After serving as an engineer upon the Gotha Ca.n.a.l he became an officer in the Swedish army, from which circ.u.mstance he got his t.i.tle of captain. Most government work was then done by army officers, especially in field surveying. The appointments of government surveyors being offered soon afterward to compet.i.tive examination among the officers of the army, Ericsson went to Stockholm and entered the lists. Detailed maps of fifty square miles of Swedish territory, still upon file at Stockholm, show his skill. Though his work as a surveyor exceeded that of any of his companions, he was not satisfied. He sought an outlet for his superfluous activity in preparing the drawings and engraving sixty-four large plates for a work ill.u.s.trating the Gotha Ca.n.a.l. His faculty for invention was shown here by the construction of a machine-engraver, with which eighteen copper-plates were completed by his own hand within a year.

From engraving young Ericsson turned his attention to experiments with flame as a means of producing mechanical power, and it is interesting to note that forty years afterward a large part of his income in this country was derived from his gas-or flame-engine, thousands of which are now in use in New York City alone for pumping water up to the tops of the houses. His early flame-engine, as it was called, turned out so well that after building one of ten horse-power, he obtained leave of absence to go to England to introduce the invention. He never returned to Sweden for any length of time, although he remained a Swede at heart, and many Swedish orders and decorations have been conferred upon him. In addition to the monument near Ericsson's birthplace, already mentioned, the government has erected a granite shaft, eighteen feet high, in front of the cottage in which he was born. This shaft, bearing the inscription, "John Ericsson was born here in 1803," was dedicated on September 3, 1867, when work was suspended in the neighboring mines and iron furnaces, and a holiday was held in honor of Sweden's famous son. Poems were read, the chief engineer of the mining district delivered an oration, and Dr. Pallin, a savant from Philipstad, reminded his hearers that seven cities in Greece contended for the honor of being Homer's birthplace. "Certificates of baptism did not then exist," said Dr.

Pallin, "and there is no doubt with us as to Ericsson's birthplace; yet to guard against all accidents we have here placed a record of baptism weighing eighty thousand pounds." The monument stands on an isthmus between two lakes surrounded by green hills.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Novelty Locomotive, built by Ericsson to compete with Stephenson's Rocket, 1829.]

Ericsson's life in England began in 1826. Fortune did not smile upon his efforts to introduce his flame-engine, for the coal fire which had to be used in England was too severe for the working parts of the apparatus.

But Ericsson possessed a capacity for hard work that recognized no obstacles. He undertook a new series of experiments which resulted finally in the completion of an engine which was patented and sold to John Braithwaite. Young Ericsson's capacity for work and for keeping half a dozen experiments in view at the same time seems to have been as remarkable in those early days as when he became famous. Records of the London Patent Office credit him with invention after invention. Among these were a pumping-engine on a new principle; engines with surface condensers and no smoke-stack, as applied to the steamship Victory in 1828; an apparatus for making salt from brine; for propelling boats on ca.n.a.ls; a hydrostatic weighing machine, to which the Society of Arts awarded a prize; an instrument to be used in taking deep-sea soundings; a file-cutting machine. The list covers some fourteen patented inventions and forty machines.

Perhaps his most important work at this period was a device for creating artificial draught in locomotives, to which aid the development of our railroad owes much. In 1829 the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad offered a prize of $2,500 for the best locomotive capable of doing certain work.

The prize was taken by Stephenson with his famous Rocket; but his sharpest compet.i.tor in this contest was John Ericsson. Four locomotives entered the contest. The London _Times_ of October 8, 1829, speaks highly of the Novelty, the locomotive entered by Messrs. Braithwaite & Ericsson, saying: "It was the lightest and most elegant carriage on the road yesterday, and the velocity with which it moved surprised and amazed every beholder. It shot along the line at the amazing rate of thirty miles an hour. It seemed indeed to fly, presenting one of the most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world ever beheld."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged twenty-three.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mrs. John Ericsson, nee Amelia Byam.

(From an early daguerreotype.)]

The railroad directors, at whose invitation this test was made, had asked for ten miles an hour; Ericsson gave them thirty. The excitement of the witnesses found vent in loud cheers. Within an hour the shares of the railroad company rose ten per cent., and the young engineer might well have considered his fortune made. But although he had beaten his rival ten miles an hour, the judges determined to make traction power, rather than speed, the critical test, and the prize was awarded to Stephenson's Rocket, which drew seventeen tons for seventy miles at the rate of thirteen miles an hour. Stephenson's engine weighed twice as much as Ericsson's. Nevertheless Ericsson's success with the Novelty was such as to keep him busy in this particular field. He followed it up with a steam fire-engine that astonished London at the burning of the Argyle Rooms, in 1829, when for the first time, as one of the local papers remarked, "fire was extinguished by the mechanical power of fire." Another engine, of larger power, built for the King of Prussia, soon after rendered excellent service in Berlin, and a third was built for Liverpool in 1830. Ten years afterward the Mechanics' Inst.i.tute of New York awarded a gold medal to Ericsson as a prize for the best plan of a steam-engine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Exterior View of Ericsson's House, No. 36 Beach Street, New York, 1890.]

Disappointed in his ill success with inventions pertaining to locomotives, Ericsson now turned his attention to his early flame-engine, and the working model of a caloric engine of five-horse power soon attracted the attention of London. At first there seemed to be a great future for engines upon this principle, but after many years of experiments, at great expense, Ericsson found that the principle was useful only for purposes requiring small power. In 1851 he built a heat-engine for the ship Ericsson, a vessel two hundred and sixty feet in length, and tells the result as follows: "The ship after completion made a successful trip from New York to Washington and back during the winter season; but the average speed at sea proving insufficient for commercial purposes, the owners, with regret, acceded to my proposition to remove the costly machinery, although it had proved perfect as a mechanical combination. The resources of modern engineering having been exhausted in producing the motors of the caloric ship, the important question, Can heated air, as a mechanical motor, compete on a large scale with steam? has forever been set at rest. The commercial world is indebted to American enterprise for having settled a question of such vital importance. The marine engineer has thus been encouraged to renew his efforts to perfect the steam-engine without fear of rivalry from a motor depending on the dilation of atmospheric air by heat."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air.

(Patented as a pumping-engine, 1880.)]

Before leaving this question of heat-engines and pa.s.sing 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 a.s.surance 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistance 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-advertis.e.m.e.nt, 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."

Withdrawing to a corner the board held a consultation and invited the inventor to call again at one o'clock. When Ericsson returned he brought with him a diagram ill.u.s.trating more fully his reasons for considering his proposed vessel to be perfectly stable. Commodore, afterward Admiral, Paulding was convinced, and admitted that Ericsson had taught him much about the stability of vessels. Secretary Welles was informed that the board reported favorably upon Ericsson's plan, and told the inventor that he might return to New York and begin work, as the contract would follow him. When the contract came it was found to be a singularly one-sided affair. If the Monitor proved vulnerable--in other words; if it was not a success--the money paid for it by the Navy Department was to be refunded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sectional View of Monitor through Turret and Pilot-house.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Original Monitor.]

It took one hundred days to build the Monitor. During those three months Ericsson scarcely slept, and even in his dreams he went over the details of the new-fangled war-engine he was building. He named her Monitor because, he said, she would warn the nations of the world that a new era in naval warfare had begun. The story of his untiring activity has been told almost as often as that of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. He was at the ship-yard before any of the workmen, and was the last to leave. In the construction of so novel a craft difficulties of a puzzling nature came up every day. If Ericsson could not solve them on the spot, he studied the matter in the quiet of the night, and was ready with his drawings in the morning. The result of the naval battle in Hampton Roads, on the 9th of March, 1862, between the little Monitor and the big Merrimac made Ericsson the hero of the hour. Had no David appeared to stop the ravages of the Confederate Goliath, it is hard to say what might not have been the injury inflicted upon the cause of the Union by the terrible Merrimac. The United States Navy was virtually panic-stricken when the Monitor, this "Yankee cheese-box on a plank," as the Southerners called her, came to the rescue.

Notwithstanding the tremendous service rendered the country, Ericsson declined to receive more compensation for the Monitor than his contract called for. In reply to a resolution of the New York Chamber of Commerce calling for "a suitable return for his services as will evince the grat.i.tude of the nation," Ericsson said: "All the remuneration I desire for the Monitor I get out of the construction of it. It is all-sufficient." Our grateful nation took him at his word. But honors of another and less costly kind were showered upon him. Chief Engineer Stimers, who was on the Monitor during her battle with the Merrimac, wrote to Ericsson: "I congratulate you on your great success. Thousands have this day blessed you. I have heard whole crews cheer you. Every man feels that you have saved this place to the nation by furnishing us with the means to whip an iron-clad frigate that was, until our arrival, having it all her own way with our most powerful vessels."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson, giving a Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal Section drawn over it.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow.]

War vessels upon the plan of the Monitor speedily appeared among the navies of several nations. England refused at first to admit the value of the invention and was not converted until the double-turreted Miantonomoh visited her waters in 1866, when one of the London papers described her appearance among the British fleet as that of a wolf among a flock of sheep. The day of the big wooden war-vessels was over. It was, nevertheless, an Englishman and a naval officer, Captain Cowper Coles, who sought to deprive Ericsson of the honor of his invention.

Coles declared that he had devised a ship during the Crimean War, in which a turret or cupola was to protect the guns. Ericsson's letter to Napoleon III., written in 1854, is sufficient answer to this, besides which Ericsson's scheme includes more than a stationary shield for the guns, which is all that Coles claimed. Coles succeeded, however, in inducing the British Admiralty to build a vessel according to his plans.

This ill-fated craft upset off Cape Finisterre on the night of September 6, 1870, and went to the bottom with Coles and a crew of nearly five hundred men.

Having devised an apparatus that made wooden war-vessels useless, Ericsson turned his attention to the destruction of iron-clads, and devoted ten years of his life to the construction of his famous torpedo-boat, the Destroyer, upon which he spent about all the money he ama.s.sed by other work. According to his belief, no vessel afloat could escape annihilation in a battle with his Destroyer. This vessel is designed to run at sufficient speed to overtake any of the iron-clads.

It offers small surface to the shot of an enemy, and besides being heavily armored, it can be partly submerged beneath the waves. When within fighting distance it fires under water, by compressed air, a projectile containing dynamite sufficient to raise a big war-ship out of the water. The explosion takes place when the projectile meets with resistance, such as the sides of a ship. To Ericsson's great disappointment, the United States Government persistently refused to purchase the Destroyer or to commission Ericsson to build more vessels of her type.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Development of the Monitor Idea.]

Of Ericsson's home life there is not much to be told. He was utterly wrapped up in his work. With his devoted secretary, Mr. Arthur Taylor, his days knew scarcely any variation. Of social recreation he had none.

In conversation he was abrupt and somewhat peculiar, apparently regarding all other talk than that relating to mechanics and germane subjects as a waste of words. His shrewd face, with its blue eyes and fringe of white hair, was not an unkindly one, however, and the few workmen he employed in the Beach Street house were devoted to him. No great man was ever more intensely averse to personal notoriety. Although often advised to make his Destroyer better known by means of newspaper articles, he persistently refused to see newspaper men; and the professional interviewer and lion-hunter were his pet aversions. It was perhaps to avoid them that he left his house only after nightfall, and then but for a walk in the neighborhood.