Nuclear submarine nuclear-powered submarine was first proposed in the United States Navy by the Naval Research Laboratory's Ross Gunn in 1939. Construction of the world's first nuclear powered submarine was made possible by the successful development of a nuclear propulsion plant by a group of scientists and engineers at the Naval Reactors Branch of the Bureau of Ships and the Atomic Energy Commission. In July 1951 the U.S. Congress authorized construction of the first nuclear-powered submarine, "Nautilus", under the leadership of Captain Hyman G. Rickover, USN (sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea",
Nautilus (1800 submarine) Nautilus (1800 submarine) Nautilus was a submarine first tested in 1800. Though preceded by Cornelis Drebbel's vessel of 1620, "Nautilus" is often considered to be the first practical submarine. "Nautilus" was designed between 1793 and 1797 by the American inventor Robert Fulton, then living in the French First Republic. He unsuccessfully proposed to the Directory that they subsidize its construction as a means to balance British seapower. His second, also unsuccessful, proposal to them was that he be paid nothing until "Nautilus" had sunk British shipping, and then only a small percentage of the prize money. Fulton directed his next