Ericsson John








John Ericsson, Inventor of the USS Monitor, Tries to Mediate between His Patent Lawyer and His Primary Investor





JOHN ERICSSON, Autograph Letter Signed, to [John B. Kitching], July 26, 1859. 2 pp., 8.5" x 10". Expected folds, some chipping on edges affecting two words.





Complete Transcript


July 26/59


My Dear Sir


Pray put your mind at ease in the Stoughton matter. I never contemplated any note transaction whatever. Here is my offer by telegraph July 16. “Mr. Kitching will pay five hundred dollars for boat and engine, besides sixty dollars for transportation, two hundred and fifty dollars he will remit as soon as the boat is on the cars, the balance in four months. The sixty dollars he will pay when the boat arrives.” Unfortunately, you volunteered at a subsequent interview to give a note at four months. I was induced by this to say, in a letter to Mr Staughton, “had you not better take Mr Kitchings note and pay it away after putting your name across its back” as to any other name being added I have made no such suggestion. I view the matter as a private speculation and proposed to Staughton to take the note to save you the cash for the moment, deeming $500, quite little enough for the engine alone which already has paid the $150 patent fee being only $350, as actual cost.


To say the truth I felt annoyed on receiving Stoughton’s telegram. The deriding the small sums and the demand on “Kitching & Company” both took me by surprise.


I do not know the practice here, but an Englishman never gives a note for less than one hundred pounds. You may with great propriety refuse to divide the $250, but that amount you are bound to pay by a four months note with your single name. If you are prevented by reasons not necessary to mention, then let us try the “model Lawyer” with your substitute of $200, cash by the middle of August.


I did not intend to start the [?] to day. The charging with oil was the utmost of my calculations.


I am delighted to learn that the captain of the Wild Pigeon yields the space. His mate grumbled at [?] on my first visit to the ship. I am now planning a [?] to attach to the engine above in order to get rid of, for ever, the objection as to space, besides reducing the cost of the [?] nearly one half.


Yours truly,


J. Ericsson





Historical Background


John Ericsson became intrigued with the idea of a caloric engine at a young age. The caloric engine worked on the basic principle of power by hot air, with no need for steam. Expanding warm air drove the piston, fly wheel, and shaft. Ericsson began designing caloric engines in the 1820s and continued to modify the designs until his death. His primary investor in the United States was New York merchant John B. Kitching, who became the principal owner of the ocean-going caloric ship Ericsson, constructed in 1852 at a cost of $500,000. Although the initial reaction of the press and engineers was positive and the ship was a mechanical triumph, it proved to be a commercial failure. His smaller caloric engines, however, achieved a moderate degree of success and brought him considerable financial rewards.





Ericsson sold partial interest in his American patents to his patent attorney and friend Edwin W. Stoughton (1818-1882), who later served as U.S. Minister to Russia from 1877 to 1879. Stoughton is the “model Lawyer” to whom Ericsson refers in this letter.








John Ericsson (1803-1889) was born in Sweden and began working independently as a surveyor at the age of fourteen. He joined the Swedish army in 1820 and completed surveys in northern Sweden. In his spare time, he constructed a heat engine that used hot air instead of steam as a propellant. He moved to England in 1826, but his engine that worked well with Swedish wood as fuel fared poorly with English coal. By 1836, Ericsson had patented a design for a screw propeller. After designing an improved twin-propeller steamer, Ericsson moved to New York in 1839, and became a naturalized citizen in 1848. He built a screw-propelled warship for the U.S. Navy, but one of the guns on the USS Princeton exploding during trials in 1844, killing several dignitaries, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy. The Navy sought to blame Ericsson, and he turned to civilian pursuits. Ericsson continued to develop his caloric engine, for which he won the Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1862. In 1854, Ericsson presented French Emperor Napoleon III a plan for an iron-clad armored battle ship, but France did not build it. Ericsson submitted a novel design for an armored warship to the U.S. Navy in 1861, and the USS Monitor was built in time to confront the first Confederate ironclad. He continued to work on naval inventions, including a torpedo, a destroyer, and a torpedo boat, until his death.





John B. Kitching (1813-1887) was born in England and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1824. He married Maria Bradner, and they had six children. One of his sons, John Howard Kitching, became a brigadier general in the Union Army and died from wounds received at the Battle of Cedar Creek in October 1864. John B. Kitching became a prominent New York merchant. He supported Samuel Morse in his telegraphic inventions and helped finance the first transatlantic cable. He also supported John Ericsson’s development of caloric engines. In 1860, Kitching authored Ericsson’s Caloric Engine, an illustrated 48-page pamphlet promoting the caloric engine and including many testimonials to its quality and utility.








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