How the Submarine Was Born
From a leather-covered rowboat to a streamlined modern vessel with nuclear warheads, the submarine has made great strides since its conception.
The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. However, da Vinci refused to reveal his discovery to the world because he feared “the evil nature of men who practice assassination at the bottom of the sea.”