David Bushnell came up with the idea for the Turtle submersible only days after Lexington and Concord. He’d been working on several different experiments he’d conducted at Yale College, and found a way to integrate them into a single device to use against the British.

The Turtle was revolutionary (heh) in a couple of ways: first, nobody had successfully created anything like it before, and more importantly, Bushnell (along with Isaac Doolittle) came up with the screw propeller as a means of maneuvering the vehicle. No water vehicle had ever used a propeller as a means of getting from one place to another, and while the design has been refined for various purposes and to improve efficiency, Bushnell’s propeller is easily recognizable today for what it is.

It was pretty brilliant for its time, and in September we’ll see it in action, in New York Harbor.

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