Robert Fulton the "Nautilus", the first practical submarine in history. Fulton is also credited with inventing some of the world's earliest naval torpedoes for use by the British Royal Navy. Fulton became interested in steam engines and the idea of steamboats in 1777 when he was around age 12 and visited state delegate William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who was interested in this topic. Henry had learned about inventor James Watt and his Watt steam engine on an earlier visit to England. Robert Fulton was born on a farm in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1765. He had three sisters –
Marine steam engine time. A triple-expansion engine is a compound engine that expands the steam in three stages—i.e. an engine with three cylinders at three different pressures. A quadruple-expansion engine expands the steam in four stages, and so on. The first successful commercial use was an engine built at Govan in Scotland by Alexander C. Kirk for the SS "Aberdeen" in 1881. Multiple-expansion engine manufacture continued well into the 20th century. All 2,700 Liberty ships built by the United States during World War II were powered by triple-expansion engines, because the capacity of the US to manufacture marine steam turbines was entirely directed