Bushnells Turtle Submarine This was a cut through model made for a software company called Scicon to display at their exhibition stand at the Navy Show. The replica is a reconstruction taken from written sources and early engravings of the first working submarine. Built by Bushnel to attack the British Fleet during the American War of Independence. The model showed the original innovative ideas, cranked propeller, auger to drill into the hull of the ships and left fixed with a timed explosive charge. Luminescent gauge painted in the original with a local sea plant (ground up) that glowed in the dark and even a pressure gauge that Bushnell invented with a cork and tube arrangement. Bushnell's submarine actually worked, but he couldn't get a fix through the copper sheathing on the hull of the British Men of War. As the charge was primed he had to 'ditch' the auger and floating explosive case, which subsequently went off and, so the story goes, so frightened the fleet as they didn't know where the explosion had come from that they left the harbour allowing the blockade to lifted. Thus making America the Land of the Free that it is today.

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