Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-10-28
JOHN ERICSSON.
Personal Peculiarities of the Eccen.
tric Old Swedish Inventor.
His Daily Routine OF Life---CuriOus
Traits of Character---PersOn
Appearance.

[Leander Richardson, in Boston Herald.]
An eccentric man is old John Ericsson. He
lives in Beach street because the surround
ings are questionable He does not like to
be bothered by visitors, and he is choleric
enough to be stage father He has few &C.
quaintances and an infinitesima1 number Of
intimates. He lives 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 long
and successful life of hard work, but goes
ahead as resolutely and as earnestly and as
enthusiastically as though his career were just
beginning, Why should man work when
he has done enough? To the mind of 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 to 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 lin the
morning as he did when 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
lIlvO Ills Olu-LoouiOHcu, DILL Will
limp, standing collar his broadcloth trousers
and coat and his buff duck vest. A break
fast, which Hanlan would think harsh ad-
herence to 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 in the afternoon.
Then dinner, largely vegetarian in its direc-
hot O OF irhf
he sticks closely to his drawing-table outlin-
ing curious pieces of machineryfor some new
development of inventive genius. Here fol
lows the most curious and eccentric part OF
Mr.. Ericsson's routine. Instead of sitting
down to rest and think, he puts an old CHM
ney pot hat upon his head, seizes his cane,
and goes for 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 proving, weak
tea, and a strong temper.
Ericsson is Swede. He Yves born in a
place with more syllables than inhabit-
ants, the bulk of the people having presun-
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
Capt Ericsson seems to have an exceedingly
good name in Sweden, and to have
increased it there by his work in
mo
sary of his birthday, a month or SO
ago, he received long cablegram from
one of the workingmen's societies of that
country, in which the best wishes for his
health and continued prosperity were nlen-
toned, together with the prevalent belief in
Sweden that he is the greatest worker Of the
age. He has certainly produced matches
succession Of great inventions, and he has
been at it ever since he was a mere young
ster. His father was a mine owner in Sweden
at the place with the big name there the
monument commemorative of Capt. EricS-
sons birth now stands. He was only boy
when his fathers influence got him place
ON the GoJhe canal, where ne was placed in
charge Of section of the works. He carried
On operations in Sweden up to his 25d year,
at which time lie 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-
hibition 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 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. It was seven years
later that he adopted the screw pro-
peller, which made a great, but Infavorable,
sensation in shipping matters all over
the world. The English admiralty are
conservative if they are anything. They still
retain their old fashion of scouting anything
whatever that is new or likely to turn over
the old systems Of shipping. They derided
the screw propeller in the most decisive
terms, and, after Capt. Ericsson had vainly
tried to secure an admission of the value Of
his work, his temper got the better OF him
and he left for America. He was 80 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 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 bIr. Ericsson's
character is his total absence of anxiety to
personally see the workings Of any of his ms
chinery. He has never been on board the
Destroyer but once since she was completed,
although experiments have been going for
ward steadily ever since the preparations
were complete In fashioning an invention
of this kind, Ericsson works almost entirely
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
thousand times When I entered Capt.
Ericsson's parlor On Beach street the other
day, I 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 the house of a
man such as 1 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 tinge of abruptness i'll his voice, and ]
may add that he seemed intensely relieved
when the ordeal OF facts through which he'd
mt him had nassau TIN on oh the hs Ok win