OCR Text |
Show Ericsson' Monitor. John Ericsson, the great engineer, in a confidential letter, written March 23, 1800, said: "The great importance of what I call tho subaquatic system of naval warfare strongly presented it3clf to my mind In 1820; yet I have not during dur-ing this long interval communicated my ideas to a single person, excepting Em-poror Em-poror Napoleon III. What I knew twelve years ago, he knows, with regard to the general result of my labors, but the do-tails do-tails remain a secret with me. Tho Monitor of 1S5U was tho visible part of my system, and its grand features were excluded from its published drawings and descriptions." Among Ericsson's papers were found, after his death, a series of autograph pencil drawings, showing these concealed features of his monitor system as originally conceived. They represent tho ideas of subaquatic attack first presented in the Destroyer in 1878, after being withheld from tho public pub-lic gaze by their author for half a century cen-tury Scribinrr. |