Background
John and Nils were born in Långbanshyttan, Värmland, Sweden and received no formal education, but were taught the rudiments of mechanics from an early age by their father, Olof Ericsson. Olof worked as the superintendent of a mine in Värmland until he lost money in speculations and had to move his family to Forsvik, Västergötland, in 1810. There Olaf became a director of blastings during the excavation of Sweden's Göta Canal (built 1810-1832). He secured permission for his sons to draw in the office of the draughtsmen of the canal company, where they also learned to draw maps, and he persuaded Lieutenant Brandenburg of the Navy Mechanical Corps to teach them the art of shading and 'finishing off' mechanical drawings before they were in their teens.
Their extraordinary skills were noted by Baltzar von Platen, the architect of the Göta Canal, and they were soon dubbed cadets of mechanics of the Swedish Navy and engaged as trainees at the canal enterprise. When two engineers sent to England by Count Platen to obtain information about canal construction returned in 1815 and began to instruct a number of cadets of the Swedish Corps of Mechanical Engineers, the Ericsson brothers were among them; Nils being then twelve years old and John eleven.
Read more about this topic: Nils Ericson
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