Early Notions.

The concept of the submarine is an old one and appears always to have been linked to military uses. As long ago as the fifteenth century the Italian engineer Roberto Valturio designed (but probably never built) a submarine powered by paddle wheels. In the seventeenth century the Dutch engineer Cornelius Drebbel built a diving bell that was open at the bottom and held several passengers. Both the English natural philosopher John Wilkins and the Frenchman Marin Mersenne speculated on whether a ship might be made to navigate underwater. In the eighteenth century David Bushnell of Connecticut built a submarine named the Turtle that was used during the Revolutionary War to attack a British ship in New York harbor in August 1776. Jules Verne, of course, popularized the concept in his famous novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1873).

The First Holland Models.

John...