John Ericsson, inventor of the "U.S.S Monitor", Autograph Letter Signed, written on both sides of a 7.75" x 10" sheet of paper, usual folds

The letter is dated July 27th, 1860 and reads,

My dear Sir

Two weeks ago I should hardly have thought it worth the trouble to entertain the Buenos Aires water work question, but now I would have not the slightest hesitation in actually [commence?] building.

4,000,000 in 24 hours demands an engine that can run nearly 2800 gallons a minute which happens to be a little less than the engine I am now building for [Pisanti?] new boat. It would not at all answer however to run so close to calculation and here I would propose two such engines with separate pumps. Each engine with pumps complete for putting up would cost here (to make a handsome thing to ourselves) $20,000—together $40,000. The advantage of having two separate engines with separate pumps, each set nearly powerful enough to furnish the 4,000,000 gallon per diem Mr. Hopkins will understand. The quantity of coal for 24 hours will be under 3½ tons of anthracite to raise the full supply of 4,000,000. One fire man on duty all the time, say 3 for the 24 hours and one engineer with an assistant to take his watch, will be all the assistance which caloric power would demand cheap enough, all [?] certainly.

Six months for constructing the whole, ready for delivery, would be ample to enable us to do the thing well.

As the big engine, which I propose to copy, will be in operation before you can obtain an order there will be no harm in stating that both power and consumption of fuel will be practically demonstrated to serve as a guaranty.

The caloric engine cannot be adapted for candle manufacturing as the purifying the tallow demands steam, but is not answering the purpose at all.

                                                                        Yours truly,

                                                                        J. Ericsson

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John Ericsson (1803-1889) was born in Sweden and began working independently as a surveyor at the age of fourteen in 1817. He joined the Swedish army in 1820 and completed surveys in northern Sweden. In his spare time, he developed and constructed a caloric engine that used hot air instead of steam as a propellant where expanding warm air drove the piston, fly wheel, and shaft. He moved to England in 1826, but his engine that worked so 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. 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, during which time he wrote this letter.  In 1854, Ericsson presented French Emperor Napoleon III a plan for an iron-clad armored battle ship, but France did not build it. 

One year after writing this letter, in August 1861, Congress recommended the construction of armored ships for the navy.  Ericsson submitted a novel design for an armored ship with a rotating turret based on the Swedish lumber rafts of his birth nation. The USS Monitor was constructed in approximately one hundred days, an incredible achievement, and launched on March 6, 1862. Three days later, the USS Monitor confronted the CSS Virginia (the former USS Merrimack) at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in the first battle between ironclad warships. Although the battle ended as a tactical stalemate, the Monitor effectively checked the Virginia’s assault on the Union fleet. Dozens of additional monitors contributed to the success of the Union Navy for the remainder of the war. In 1862, Ericsson won the Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He continued to work on naval inventions, including a torpedo, a destroyer, and a torpedo boat, until his death in 1889 at the age of 86.