in this respect the wide
world is now smaller than the confines of an English county a
century ago.

In this field, as we shall see, Ericsson did some of his greatest work,
and left perhaps his most permanent record for the future.

Ericsson's life falls most naturally into three periods chronologically
or geographically, and likewise into three periods professionally,
though the latter mode of subdivision has by no means the same
boundaries as the former. The first mode of subdivision gives us the
life in Sweden, the life in England, and the life in the United States.
The second mode gives us the life of struggle and obscurity, the life of
struggle, achievement, and recognition, and the calmer and easier life
of declining years with recognition, reward, and the assurance of a
life's work well done.

John Ericsson was born in the province of Vermland, Sweden, in 1803. His
father was Olof Ericsson, a mine owner and inspector who was well
educated after the standard of his times, having graduated at the
college in Karlstad, the principal town of the province. His mother was
Britta Sophia Yngstrom, a woman of Flemish-Scotch descent, and to whom
Ericsson seems to have owed many of his stronger characteristics. Three
children were born: Caroline in 1800, Nils in 1802, and John in 1803. Of
John's earliest boyhood we have but slight record, but there seems to
have been a clear foreshadowing of his future genius. He was considered
the wonder of the neighborhood, and busied himself day after day with
the machinery of the mines, drawing the form on paper with his rude
tools or making models with bits of wood and cord, and endeavoring thus
to trace the mystery of its operation.

In 1811 the Ericsson family fell upon evil times. Due to a war with
Russia, business became disturbed and in the end Olof Ericsson became
financially ruined. This brought the little family face to face with the
realities of life, and we soon after find the father occupying a
position as inspector on the Goeta Canal, a project which was just then
occupying serious attention after having been neglected for nearly one
hundred years, and nearly three hundred years after it was first
proposed in 1526. Through this connection, in 1815, John and Nils
Ericsson were appointed as cadets in a corps of Mechanical Engineers to
be employed in carrying out the Government's plans with reference to the
canal. During the winter of 1816-17 and at the age of thirteen, Jo