The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1883-10-12
JOHN ERICSSON,
Personal Peculiarities IF the Eccen-
trio Old Swedish Inventor.
His Daily Routine OF Life---Curious
Traits OF Observation-Disclosures
Appearance.

Fh tSCeub IL maj y OHi JOihl EIlGSsDus Gt
lives in Beach street because the surround
ings are unfnshionable He does not like 70
be bothered by visitors, and he is eholeric
enough TO be a stage father. He has few nc
quaintances and an infinitesimal number of
intimntes- He lives n life that Is out of all
excitement, and is only an endless routine.
He %invents, invents and invents. He rests
not satisfied with the achievement of u long
and successful life of hard work. but goes
ahead as re~solutely and Us earnestly and as
enthusiastically as though bis career were Just
beginning. Why should a man work when
he has done enoughi To the mind of a lazy
mortal like me there seems no reply. But to
the tireless energy of John Ericsson, the only
rest is in activity. He was born to harness,
has driven himself 10 harness for eighty
years, and TO harness he will go until at last
he drops dead in the middle of the roadway.
There is no rest for him.
Now in the last Of his long years he rises
from his bed Just as regularly at Tin the
morning as he did when n boy. He takes his
cold plunge and follows it with his regular
swinging of clubs and dumb bells, just as he
has done for years and years. Then he gets
into his old fashioned, starchless shirt, with
limp, standing collar, his broadcloth Trousers
and coat and his buff duck vest. A break
fast, which Hanlan would think a harsh ad-
herence 10 training rules, follows the opera
ton Of dressing. 1t consists of
weak tea, coarse bread and eggs,
or some similar dish. After
that, hard work until 4 in the afternoon.
Then dinner, largely vegetarian in its direc-
ton. From that time until 8 or 10 at night
he sticks closely to his d~rawing-table, outlin-
ing curious pieces of machiner ~ for some new
development Of inventive genius. Here fol-
lows tho most curious and eccentric part of
Mr.. Ericsson's routine. Instead of sitting
down to rest and think, he puts an old chin
ney pot hat upon his head, seizes his cane,
and goes for n long and circuitous walk,
which usually brings him back to his own
front door about midnight. Such has been
and is the daily life Of John Ericsson, me-
chanical engineer. No cigars or tobacco, no
cocktails, no brandy and soda, nothing but
exercise, work, midnight prowling, weak
ten, and q strong temper.
Ericsson is a Swede. He was born in a
place with more syllables than inhabit-
ants, the bulk of the people having presum-
ably been carried off in attempting to pro-
nounce the name of this sylvan but compli-
Gated retreat. Before the door of a miners hut
there stands at this day an eighteen-foot shaft
of native granite, bearing testimony that
here John Ericsson first saw the light in 1908.
The spot is in central Sweden, in the neigh
borhood of the Langbanslihttan iron mines.
l 1hlAa III AAn2oA YIN - no al bAlttblL6l1
good name in Sweden, and to have
increased it there by his work in
America; for on the a~nniver-
sary OF his birthday, a month or SO
ago, he received n long cablegram from
one of the workingmen's societies of that
country, in which the best wishes for his
health und continued prosperity were men
toned, together with the prevalent belief in
Sweden that he is the greatest worker of the
- Il
succession of great inventions, and he has
been at it ever since he was n mere young
ster. His father was a mine owner in Sweden
at the place with the big name where the
monument commemorative of Capt. Erics-
sons birth now stands. He was only a boy
when his fathers influence got him n place
on the Gotha canal, where he was placed in
charge OF a section of the works. He carried
on operations in Sweden up to his 23d year,
at which time he went to England to extend
his field of labor. And he has never since re-
turned to his native country.
He was one of the competitors in the ex-
bibition of steam engines, in which George
Stephenson's famous locomotive, the Rocket,
had first prize. Capt. Ericsson, with his
customary dogmatic force, declares that his
engine was quite a novelty, attained far
greater speed at the exhibition than the one
which took the prize. That was in 1929.
three years after Capt. Ericsson first landed
on English soil. 1t was seven years
later that he adopted the screw pro-
peller, which made a great, but unfavorable,
sensation in shipping matters all over
the world. Tn English admiralty are
conservative il they are anything. They still
retain their old fashion of scouting anything
whatever that Is new or likely to turn over
the old systems CT shipping. They derided
the screw propeller in the most decisive
terms, and, after Capt. Ericsson had vuinly
tried to Becure an admission of the value OF
his work, his temper got the better OF him
and he left for America. He was 30 years
old when he arrived in this country, and,
during the next few years of his life, he had
the satisfaction Of seeing his propeller scheme
demonstrate its own value in the worlds
navigation. For a long time Capt. Ericsson
devoted his mechanical genius solely to the
production of vessels of war, to which his at
tention had been turned by his English
training.
One OF the curious traits of Mr.. Ericssou's
character is his total absence of anxiety to
personally see the workings of any Of his ma
chinery. He has never been on board the
Destroyer but once since she was completed,
although experiments nave been going for
ward steadily ever since the preparations
were complete. In fasbioning an invention
VI AhAo hAAhf III h1cooA NOlhN dlulDSJ enTlTIlN
from drawings, and he knows just as well
how every part of the finished machine looks.
or should look, as though he had handled it
a thousand times. When 1 entered Capt
Ericsson's parlor on Beach street the other
day, l found myself surrounded with mod
els Of various machines, mostly those in
use for solar observations. The place was
very plainly furnished, as might have been
expected Of the best room in tho house of a
man such as l have already described. |
found him a short, thick-set person, not look
ing to be more than so years of age. with
hair slightly touched with gray, and
side whiskers that have hardly passed from
their native color. He talked shortly and
with a tinge OF ~abruptness in his voice, and |
may add that be seemed intensely relieved
when the ordeal of facts through which I had
put him had passed. Thu ough the back win
dows Of his residence / saw men at work erect
ing in his rear yard a new solar engine, which
is quite as remarkable in its way as the ma
chinery of war which he has thus far de
veloped-
The u~nimpaired bodily and mental strength
OF Capt Ericsson, after seventy years Of con-
slant application to the most firing Of ell
forms Of brain work, the extraordinary sue
cess of his principal inventions, the deter
mined Persistence of his tod, aud the profound
eccentricity of his method of life; all combine
To surround him with an atmosphere of the
keeneSt interest. He looks back-if his vision