TORPEDOS, HISTORICAL NAVAL MILTARY...

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Vintage-Views Antique Prints and Maps :: Antique Prints :: Military :: Weapons :: TORPEDOS, HISTORICAL NAVAL MILTARY ARTICLE WITH PRINTS, 1894 Original Antique Wood Engraving

TORPEDOS, HISTORICAL NAVAL MILTARY ARTICLE WITH PRINTS, 1894 Original Antique Wood Engraving

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The word torpedo comes from the torpedo genus of electric rays in the order Torpediniformes, which in turn comes from the Latin "torpere" to stun. There is no physical resemblance between the ray and the mechanical torpedo. In naval usage, the term "torpedo" was used by Robert Fulton who used the word for the towed gunpowder charge used by his submarine Nautilus in 1800–1805 to demonstrate that it could sink warships. During the American Civil War a "torpedo" was usually a "contact mine" above water using a "demijohn" or a similar container that would float, and below water tethered to the bottom using a line and a weight holding the contact mine just below the surface to sink a ship. Arabs are known to have what could be described as Torpedoes as early as the 15th Century. Records tell of a self-propelled pear shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in the enemy ships and then blew up.The first European prototypes of a self-propelled torpedo were created by Giovanni Luppis, an Austrian naval officer (though ethnically Italian) from the port city of Fiume (today known as Rijeka). In 1860, he presented the salvacoste (coastsaver), a floating weapon, driven by ropes from the land. The project was not taken up by the Navy. Luppis knew Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a Fiume factory and in 1864 Luppis made a contract with him in order to perfect the invention. The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff, the first real self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Imperial Naval commission on December 21, 1866. After the government decided to invest in the invention, Whitehead started the first torpedo factory in Fiume. In 1870, they improved the devices to travel up to 1,000 yards (914 m) at a speed of up to six knots, and by 1881 the factory was exporting its torpedoes to ten other countries. The torpedo was powered by compressed air and had an explosive charge of gloxyline or gun-cotton. Whitehead went on to develop more efficient devices, demonstrating torpedoes capable of 18 knots (1876), 24 knots (1886) and finally 30 knots (1890). Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope in 1890 to improve self-regulation of his designs. Whitehead's torpedoes came to be called the Devil's device. In 1877 the British Admiralty paid him £15,000 for certain of his developments and he opened a new factory near Portland harbour in 1891. The largest Whitehead torpedo was 18 inches (457 mm) in diameter and 19 feet (5.8 m) long, made of polished steel or phosphor-bronze, with a 200 lb (90 kg) gun-cotton warhead. The air was compressed to around 1,300 lb/in² (approx 90 atmospheres) and drove two propellers through a three cylinder Brotherhood engine. Considerable effort was taken in trying to ensure that the torpedo self-regulated its course and depth. On 16 January 1877, the Turkish steamer Intibah became the first vessel to be sunk by torpedoes, launched from torpedo boats operating from the tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin under the command of Stepan Osipovich Makarov during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. In another early use of the torpedo, Blanco Encalada was sunk by a torpedo from the gunboat Almirante Lynch, during the Chilean Civil War on April 23, 1891. By this time, the torpedo boat had gained recognition for its efficiency, and the first torpedo boat destroyers were built to counter it. Torpedoes were also used to equip gunboats making them torpedo gunboats, ships of around 1,000 tons displacment.

Published for Joseph Meyer Meyers Konversations

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SKU	0527821k6
Quantity in stock	1 item(s) available
Price:	US$15.00

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