About John Ericsson
John Ericsson (born Johan Ericsson; July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) was a Swedish-American engineer and inventor. He was active in England and the United States. Ericsson collaborated on the design of the railroad steam locomotive Novelty, which competed in the Rainhill Trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which were won by inventor George Stephenson's (1781–1848), Rocket. Later in North America, he designed the United States Navy's first screw-propelled steam frigate USS Princeton, in partnership with Captain (later Commodore) Robert F. Stockton (1795–1866) of the U.S. Navy, who unjustly blamed him for a fatal accident on the new vessel in 1844. A new partnership with Cornelius H. DeLamater (1821–1889), of the DeLamater Iron Works in New York City resulted in the first armored ironclad warship equipped with a rotating gun turret, USS Monitor, which dramatically saved the U.S. (Union Navy) naval blockading squadron from destruction by an ironclad Confederate States naval vessel, CSS Virginia, at the famous Battle of Hampton Roads at the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay (at the confluence of the James and Elizabeth Rivers) in March 1862, during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The extraordinary skills of the two Ericsson brothers were discovered by Baltzar von Platen (1766–1829), the architect of Göta Canal. Notwithstanding the disappointment, he invented several other mechanisms instead based on steam, improving the heating process by incorporating bellows to increase oxygen supply to the fire bed. It was widely praised but suffered recurring boiler problems, and the competition was won by English engineers George and Robert Stephenson with Rocket.
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