Opening the stacks
Opening the stacks
The Turtle submarine introduced foundational features of underwater combat vessels, marking the beginning of undersea warfare.
2 chapters across 1 book
This chapter examines early American naval innovations during the Revolutionary War, focusing on David Bushnell's Turtle submarine as the first combat submarine and Robert Fulton's pioneering role in developing superweapons. Fulton articulated a technological-utopian ideology linking industrial capitalism, free trade, education, and mechanical innovation to the abolition of war and the promotion of republican peace and prosperity. Despite the limited military success of his submarine Nautilus, Fulton continued to innovate with advanced weapons, believing that such technologies could dismantle traditional military powers and foster universal harmony.
The chapter examines the dangers and cultural implications of automated nuclear defense systems, highlighting multiple false alarms caused by technical and human errors that reveal the fragility of relying on machines for critical military decisions. It explores the speculative notion of war machines gaining consciousness, symbolized by Ellison's AM, reflecting humanity's self-destructive tendencies and the alienation caused by technological autonomy. The chapter also contextualizes these themes historically through detailed archival documentation of Robert Fulton's early submarine warfare innovations and introduces the literary and cultural analysis of war fantasies from the late 19th to early 20th centuries.