The great submarine adventure
People had dreamt of being able to navigate underwater long before Jules Verne created his famous Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Plans for submarines were being devised as early as the the 16th and 17th centuries.
Twenty years later, in Paris in 1800, Robert Fulton, an American engineer, undertook an experimental submersion in the Seine with his "Nautilus". But despite support from the scientists Laplace and Monge, Napoleon lost interest in the project. The first submarine actually built appeared in America in the 18th century, during the War of Independence. In 1776, the American David Bushnell built his tiny one-seater "Turtle" for attaching explosive charges to the hulls of enemy ships. Unfortunately, his efforts ended in failure. In the picture, the Nautilus, its 7m long copper hull equipped with a propeller driven by three men, tows an explosive "torpedo".
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