On this date in 1915, the first prototype military tank was manufactured. what was its nickname?2/12/2024 Designed between 17 for the French First Republic, it was the brainchild of the American engineer Robert Fulton, inventor of the first commercially successful steamboat. That future arrived in the form of the ‘plunging boat’ Nautilus, widely considered the first practical submarine ever constructed. Although it failed in its attempted missions to attach explosives to the undersides of British warships, the Turtle put down a marker for the future of warfare.Ī U-boat attack on a British commercial freighter during the First World War, as depicted by the German artist Willy Stöwer in 1915. The first ‘submarine’ to be deployed in combat, the Turtle used water as ballast and a screw propeller at its rear, both methods still in use today. In 1623, Drebbel’s submersible, using leather goatskin bags to vent water, made its erratic passage along the River Thames from Westminster to Greenwich.Īll of these inventions were bold ideas ahead of their time, but the submarine as commonly understood – that is, not a simple bathysphere lowered into the ocean and pulled back up again but a self-propelling undersea vehicle – was mainly a theoretical exercise until the use of David Bushnell’s Turtle submersible by American Revolutionary forces in 1776. The first realisable submarine schematic, devised by William Bourne in 1578, inspired the Dutch designer Cornelis Drebbel, who in the early 17th century secured the interest and funding of King James I of England to construct a prototype. In the early 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci sketched plans for a theoretical submarine, as he had for a functioning helicopter. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great is reported to have descended into the Aegean Sea in a glass sphere to observe aquatic life. The vision of a manned submersible exploring the ocean deeps is an old one.
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