John Ericsson

John Ericsson (1803–1889) was a Swedish-American mechanical engineer, the inventor of the screw propeller and designer of the ironclad warship USS Monitor. With John Braithwaite he designed Novelty, the most popular locomotive at the Rainhill Trials of 1829, which reached 28 mph but suffered repeated boiler problems and was disqualified.

Born at Värmland, Sweden on 31 July 1803, Ericsson trained at the Swedish Royal Mechanical Institute and came to England in 1826. After Rainhill he worked on a series of marine and locomotive engineering projects in Britain before moving to the United States in 1839, where he had a long and distinguished career, most notably for the United States Navy. He died at New York on 8 March 1889.