biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1803–89)
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| biography:
| Engineer and inventor, born in Långbanshyttan, Varmland Co, Sweden. He served as a topographer and a captain in the Swedish army, then moved to London and worked as an independent engineer (1826–39), developing the idea of placing a ships' engine below the waterline. His Novelty was the world's first propeller-driven commercial ship. He went to New York (1839) with a commission to build a ship for the US Navy, and became a US citizen in 1848. His propulsion system was used by commercial steamers and by the USS Princeton (1844), the world's first screw-propelled war vessel. The advent of the Civil War brought a demand for his talents, and he designed and built the USS Monitor in a 100-day period (1861–2). Following the battle between the Monitor and the CSS Virginia (formerly the Merrimac) he continued to design and build ironclads. He launched a ship capable of firing underwater torpedoes (1878) and continued his experiments to find better methods of utilizing heat energy, even looking into solar energy. He died in New York, and his remains were returned to Sweden (1890) at the request of the Swedish government. |
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