The characteristic features of Ericsson’s life up to this time, when he had reached his twenty-third year, are energy, industry, independence, all in most pronounced degree, and combined with a most astonishing insight into mechanical and scientific questions.  It was not a period of achievement, but one of formation and of development in those qualities which were soon to make him famous in both worlds.  Of his work during this period of life little or nothing outside the idea embodied in the flame-engine can be said to belong to the permanent record of his life’s achievement.  This appeared in the “Caloric” engine, and still later in the well-known Ericsson “Air” engine of the present day.

This era was one of development and promise, and richly were the promises fulfilled in the achievements of his later years.  A careful study of his life to this point is sufficient to show that, with health and time, such a nature would certainly leave a mark wide and deep on the world in which it was placed.  His characteristics were such that achievement was the very essence of life, and, with the promise and potency as revealed in this first twenty-three years of his life, we may be well prepared for the brilliant record of the remaining sixty-three.

With Ericsson’s arrival in London began the second important period of his life.  His first efforts were directed toward the introduction of the flame-engine, but he soon found unexpected difficulties in the use of coal as fuel instead of wood, and it became clear that in order to live he must turn his attention to other matters for a time.  Then followed a series of remarkable pieces of work in which Ericsson’s genius showed itself, either in original invention or in the adaptation and improvement of the existing facts and material of engineering practice.  While thus occupied, his leave from his regiment expired, and he seems to have overlooked taking proper steps to have it renewed.  He was thus placed technically in the attitude of a deserter.  Through the intervention of a friend, however, he was soon afterward restored, and promoted to the rank of Captain in the Swedish Army.  This commission he immediately resigned, and thus his record became technically cleared of all reproach.

To give a mere list of the work with which Ericsson was occupied during the years from 1827 to 1839, when he removed to the United States, would be no small task, and reference to the more important only can be here made.  Compressed air for transmitting power, forced draft for boilers by means of centrifugal blowers, steam boilers of new and improved types, the surface condenser for marine engines, the location of the engines of a ship for war purposes below the water line, the steam fire-engine, the design and construction of the “Novelty” (a locomotive for the Rainhill contest in 1829, when Stephenson’s “Rocket” was awarded the prize, though Ericsson, heavily handicapped in time and by lack of