Swedish American Profiles
We take pride in our Swedish heritage and the contributions
that Swedish-Americans have made to the advancement of this
country through the arts and science. It took courage to
leave the country that they loved to come to the United States.
We pay tribute to the many immigrants and sons and daughters of
immigrants whose contributions are so terrific.
John Ericsson, one of the 19th Century's most creative
engineers and inventors, was born on 31 July 1803 in Långban,
Värmland Sweden. As a youth, he joined the Swedish Army, which
recognized his talents and put him to work on topographical
duties. Ericsson left the Army in 1826 and moved to England,
where he pursued a variety of engineering projects, among them
the use of counter rotating screw propellers on ships, the
development of extraordinarily large guns and the creation of
engines driven by hot air instead of steam.
 Ericsson's work attracted the attention of
Robert F. Stockton, an influential and progressive U.S. Navy
officer, who encouraged him to relocate to the United States.
During the early 1840s, the two designed a screw-propelled
warship, which was commissioned in 1843 as USS Princeton, armed with heavy guns,
one of which Ericsson designed, the other by Stockton. The
tragic explosion of the Stockton designed gun, and successful efforts
of Stockton to improperly
assign the blame to Ericsson, led the strong-willed engineer to
redirect his creativity into civilian fields, which he pursued
successfully during the 1840s and 1850s.
The outbreak of the American Civil War brought John Ericsson
back into formal contact with the Navy, when he designed and
produced USS
Monitor, a revolutionary armored ship carrying her guns
in a rotating turret. Monitor's successful battle with
the Confederate ironclad
Virginia on
9 March 1862 made Ericsson a great hero in the North. For
the remainder of the conflict, he was actively involved in
designing and building a large series of "Monitor"-type turret
ships for the Navy.
Ericsson continued his work on maritime and naval technology
after the Civil War, producing ships for foreign navies and
experimenting with submarines, self-propelled torpedoes and
heavy ordnance. He remained active until his death in New York
City on 8 March 1889. In August 1890, following a memorial
service at New York, his body was placed on board the cruiser
Baltimore, which carried him across the Atlantic to his
native Sweden for burial.
Inventions and Designs by John Ericcson
The surface condensor (using steam to convert sea water to pure water)
The hot air engine
The USS Monitor, Union ironclad warship
Torpedo technology
The Solar machine (using a concave mirror to focus solar energy to run an engine)
The USS Princeton warship
Hoop gun construction
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