Samuel Colt sustained efforts to secure the adoption of his Submarine Battery system as a major element in the coastal defenses of the United States have long constituted an obscure yet potentially significant episode in the technological development of undersea warfare. Stimulated not only by apparent threat of renewed British naval assaults on the Eastern seaboard early in the 1840s, but also by notable and well-publicized advances by British military engineers in galvanic underwater demolition techniques, the development of Colt's novel harbor defense system was supported by limited Congressional appropriations during 1841-44, as well as by the encouragement of Samuel F. B. Morse and John William Draper at the University of the City of New York.

Includes bibliographical references and index. https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/2428