"I certainly hope you will be able to get the support of Congress, the naval officers, and the inventors in carrying this scheme through to a successful conclusion, which, if done, I believe will be one of the greatest constructive pieces of legislation accomplished in years."
A larger institution along the same lines might well be endowed by a number of America's bright business men who have made fortunes based upon the ideas of some poor, unsophisticated inventor who has not been brought up to worship wealth, but who had an original idea of value to the world and to the individuals who had the business capacity to get the money out of it.
Original ideas are creations, and the creation of ideas may become possible by constant study and research. In this class are all the professional inventors; but many good ideas are spontaneous and occur in brains not educated along mechanical or scientific lines. The establishment of such an institution as above outlined would conserve these spontaneous inventions for the benefit of the nation, as well as assist the professional inventor in his research.
[CHAPTER IV]
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE
Among the many submarines which were built previous to the beginning of the present century, very few taught lessons of positive value, for the great majority of these experimental craft were total failures. Knowledge of the causes of their failures is important, however, because it teaches us what errors in construction to avoid. Practically all of these early submarines were built secretly; when failures resulted the vessels were abandoned and the results of such trials were not published, consequently the succeeding designers were very apt to make the same mistakes.
It was not until the past decade that any general description of many of the early submarines was published and made available to students of this problem. In looking over the published plans and descriptions of a number of those early submarines, I have been convinced that many lives and much capital could have been saved had the results of the various experiments been openly disclosed for the guidance of later designers.
The desire to navigate in the depths of the sea has possessed the minds of many men since the beginning of history, and even at very early times several crude submarines were devised in the attempt to solve the problem. But, as I have related in the preceding chapter, it was not until the period of the war between England and her American colonists that any important progress was made. Bushnell's little submarine, called the American Turtle, was built at that time. It took its name from its shape, which resembled the back shells of two turtles joined together.