USS Nautilus (SSN-571) Nuclear Landmark. Visitors may tour the forward two compartments, with guidance from an automated system. Despite similar alterations to exhibit the engineering spaces, tours aft of the control room are not permitted due to safety and security concerns. USS Nautilus (SSN-571) USS "Nautilus" (SSN-571) was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole on 3 August 1958. Sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's classic 1870 science fiction novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", and named after another that served with distinction in World War
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea of underwater breathing apparatus designed by Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze in 1865. They designed a diving set with a backpack spherical air tank that supplied air through the first known demand regulator. The diver still walked on the seabed and did not swim. This set was called an "aérophore" (Greek for "air-carrier"). Air pressure tanks made with the technology of the time could only hold 30 atmospheres, and the diver had to be surface supplied; the tank was for bailout. The durations of 6 to 8 hours on a tankful without external supply recorded for the Rouquayrol set in