future, the day is far removed when engineers will
have passed beyond their dependence on his life and labors.

It is perhaps not amiss that, before looking more closely at the
achievements of Ericsson's life and activity, note should be taken of
the large dependence of our present civilization and mode of life on the
engineer and his work.

In different ages of the world's history each has received its name,
appropriate or fanciful as the case may have been. For the modern age no
name is perhaps more adequately descriptive than the "Age of Energy,"
the age in which our entire fabric of civilization rests upon the
utilization of the energies of nature for the needs of humanity, and to
an extent little appreciated by those who have not considered the matter
from this point of view. If we consider the various elements which enter
into our modern civilization,--the items which enter into the daily life
of the average man or woman; the items which we have come to consider as
necessities and those which we may consider as luxuries; the items which
go to make up our needs as expressed in terms of shelter, food,
intercommunication between man and his fellow, and pleasure,--the most
casual consideration of such will serve to show distributed throughout
almost the entire fabric of our civilization dependence at some point on
the power of the steam-engine, the water-wheel, or windmill, the subtle
electric current, or the heat-energy of coal, petroleum oil, or natural
gas. The harnessing and efficient utilization of these great natural
energies is the direct function of the engineer, or more especially of
the dynamic engineer, and in this noble guild of workers, Ericsson
carved for himself an enduring place and left behind a record which
should serve as an inspiration to all who are following the same pathway
in later years.

No one feature perhaps better differentiates our modern civilization
from that of earlier times, four hundred years ago, or even one hundred,
than that of intercommunication between man and his fellow. Compare the
opportunities for such intercommunication in the present with those in
the time of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Isaac Newton, George Washington, or
Napoleon I. We now have our steamships, steam and electric railroads,
cable, telegraph, and telephone. A few years ago not a single one was
known. The modern age is one which demands the utmost in the possibility
of communication between man and his kind, and