Robert WhiteheadBorn 3 Jan 1823; died 14 Nov 1905 at age 82.British engineer who invented the modern torpedo. His first torpedo lacked speed and range. However, by 1870 he had managed to increase its speed to 7 knots and could now hit a target 700 yards away. The following year the British Navy purchased Whitehead's invention. Although a spar torpedo, a charge attached to a long pole and carried by a small boat, had been used during the American Civil War, Robert Whitehead was the first to produce a self-propelling torpedo. Whitehead's torpedo was propelled by a compressed-air engine, carried 18lbs. of dynamite. Its most important feature was a self-regulating device which kept the torpedo at a constant preset depth. Edison made a movie of a Whitehead torpedo launch (1900). |
