Erik Eriksen (born 1820, death 1888), was a Norwegian ice sea captain born in Lyngør, Norway. He later moved to Hammerfest, Norway. Eriksen was the inventor of the grenade harpoon used in modern whaling. Erik Eriksen travelled to Tønsberg with a wooden model to commercialize the harpoon with the help of Svend Foyn. Svend Foyn patented and industrialized the harpoon. Erik Eriksen did neither get profits nor honor for the invention, but Svend Foyn later helped out his family in Hammerfest after Eriksen left his wife and 9 children and emigrated to the U.S.A. where he died in a blizzard in Dakota.
Famous quotes containing the word erik:
“In any case, raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the peculiar province of women.... The psychologist Erik Erikson discovered that, while little girls playing with blocks generally create pleasant interior spaces and attractive entrances, little boys are inclined to pile up the blocks as high as they can and then watch them fall down: “the contemplation of ruins,” Erikson observes, “is a masculine specialty.””
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)