Johansson, C. E. (Carl Edvard), 1864-1943

Carl Edvard Johansson, Swedish inventor and scientist, was born March 15, 1864. In 1888, while employed as an armourer inspector by the state arsenal, he became interested in the tools used for measuring parts for the rifles being produced. He became convinced that an elaborate series of blocks could be devised for universal use. Johansson was granted his first Swedish patent, called "Gauge Block Sets for Precision Measurement", in 1901. By 1906, his gauges provided an accuracy approaching one thousandth of a millimeter, and in 1908 the accuracy was on ten-thousandth of a millimeter. He formed the Swedish company CE Johansson AB on March 16, 1917. The first CEJ gauge block set in America was sold to Henry Martin Leland at Cadillac Automobile Company around 1908. The first manufacturing plant in American for his gauge block sets was established in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1919. By 1923, his business in the United States was on the verge of bankruptcy. After explaining his predicament to Henry Ford, Ford offered Johansson facilities for his business in Ford's new Engineering Laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan, where he worked for 12 years until retiring to Sweden in 1936. Ford Motor Company sold "Jo-blocks" to a multitude of customers over the years, reaching its peak during World War II. Johansson is credited with making it possible for manufacturing companies around the world to work from a universal measuring standard, thus facilitating the transition to the industrial era.