Inventions & Discoveries · Weapons and war
Torpedo
A torpedo is a self-propelled underwater weapon with an explosive warhead that detonates on contact with or close to its target. The word first named mines and spar torpedoes, used by Cornelius Drebbel, Robert Fulton and in the American Civil War. In 1864 the naval officer Giovanni Luppis gave the English engineer Robert Whitehead plans for a floating weapon at Fiume, now Rijeka in Croatia; Whitehead made from it the first modern self-propelled torpedo, run underwater by compressed air, and presented it to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on 21 December 1866. On 16 January 1878 the Turkish steamer Intibah became the first ship sunk by self-propelled torpedoes.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 1866
- Where
- Fiume (Rijeka, Croatia)
- Credited to
- Robert Whitehead · Giovanni Luppis · Austrian Empire
NoteAround 1280 Hasan al-Rammah described a rocket-driven incendiary craft that moved across the water, often cited as an early torpedo, but historians class it as a surface-skimming rocket; until about 1900 the word also covered mines and spar torpedoes.
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Torpedo. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/torpedo
- MLA
- “Torpedo.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/torpedo. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Torpedo.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/torpedo.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Torpedo’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/torpedo (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻