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In the early 17th century, the Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel, in the employ of King James I of England, invented the spar torpedo; he attached explosives to the end of a beam affixed to one of his submarines.
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Who invented the Whitehead torpedo?
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Robert Whitehead was a British engineer who invented the modern torpedo. In 1856, after serving an apprenticeship in Manchester and working in Marseille, Milan, and Trieste, he organized, with local capital, a marine-engineering works, Stabilimento Tecnico Fiumano, in Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 4, 2024 · During the Napoleonic Wars the American inventor Robert Fulton experimented with a naval mine and called it a torpedo, apparently deriving its name from a fish that emits an electric discharge that incapacitates its enemies.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Whitehead torpedo was the first self-propelled or "locomotive" torpedo ever developed. [ a] It was perfected in 1866 by British engineer Robert Whitehead from a rough design conceived by Giovanni Luppis of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in Fiume. [ 7]
Robert Whitehead (3 January 1823 – 14 November 1905) was an English engineer who was most famous for developing the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo . Early life. He was born in Bolton, England, the son of James Whitehead, a cotton-bleacher, and his wife Ellen Whitehead née Swift.
Jun 27, 2018 · The torpedo, a self‐propelled and self‐guided underwater explosive device, was invented in 1866 by Robert Whitehead, a British engineer working for the Austro‐Hungarian Navy. The U.S. Navy evinced early interest in the device and established in 1869 the Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island.
From a family active in the cotton business, Whitehead began developing a self-propelled torpedo after partnering with Giovanni Luppis, who had invented a primitive shore-launched torpedo. Credit: Public Domain