How the World's First Guided Weapon Was Invented in Australia — And Britain Never Fired It
Aussie War Archives
1,815 views
#Australia #History #Engineering
In 1874, a twenty-two-year-old watchmaker's apprentice in Melbourne pulled a thread off a cotton reel and noticed something: pull it from underneath, at an angle, and the reel rolls toward you. From that, Louis Brennan worked out how to steer a torpedo from the shore with two wires, like reins on a horse. Britain paid him a fortune for it and built it into forts from Dover to Singapore. It was the world's first practical guided weapon. And it was never fired at an enemy. Not once.
This documentary is the story of the reel, the wires, and the young Irish-Australian inventor who saw what nobody else saw. Brennan's dirigible torpedo was faster, longer-ranged and more accurate than the weapons of its day, and for roughly two decades it formed the backbone of British harbour defence at Dover, Gibraltar, Malta, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Discover how a child's bobbin trick became a war-winning idea, why Britain paid more than a hundred thousand pounds for the patent, and how a weapon that was the most advanced of its kind on earth spent its whole life waiting for a war that never came to its harbour.
🔥 In this video:
The Reel: The workbench moment that started it all.
The One-Way Machine: Why a weapon is the one thing a man builds that never has to come home.
The Wires: How Brennan steered a torpedo from the shore.
The Fortress Weapon: Dover to Singapore, and the price Britain paid.
Never Fired: The most advanced harbour weapon on earth, and the war that never came.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
Australian Dictionary of Biography (1969) 'Brennan, Louis (1852–1932)', Volume 3, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Beanse, A. and Moore, D. (1996) Brennan Torpedo: The History and Operation of the World's First Practicable Guided Weapon, Gosport: Palmerston Forts Society.
Gray, E. (1991) The Devil's Device: Robert Whitehead and the History of the Torpedo, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
Naval Historical Society of Australia (2019) 'Louis Brennan (1852–1932): The Wizard of Oz', Naval Historical Review, Sydney: Naval Historical Society of Australia.
Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) 'Brennan, Louis', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#Australia #History #Engineering #LouisBrennan #Torpedo #GuidedMissile #MilitaryHistory #Victorian #Invention
1 Comments
How the World's First Guided Weapon Was Invented in Australia — And Britain Never Fired It
Aussie War Archives
1,815 views
#Australia #History #Engineering
In 1874, a twenty-two-year-old watchmaker's apprentice in Melbourne pulled a thread off a cotton reel and noticed something: pull it from underneath, at an angle, and the reel rolls toward you. From that, Louis Brennan worked out how to steer a torpedo from the shore with two wires, like reins on a horse. Britain paid him a fortune for it and built it into forts from Dover to Singapore. It was the world's first practical guided weapon. And it was never fired at an enemy. Not once.
This documentary is the story of the reel, the wires, and the young Irish-Australian inventor who saw what nobody else saw. Brennan's dirigible torpedo was faster, longer-ranged and more accurate than the weapons of its day, and for roughly two decades it formed the backbone of British harbour defence at Dover, Gibraltar, Malta, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Discover how a child's bobbin trick became a war-winning idea, why Britain paid more than a hundred thousand pounds for the patent, and how a weapon that was the most advanced of its kind on earth spent its whole life waiting for a war that never came to its harbour.
🔥 In this video:
The Reel: The workbench moment that started it all.
The One-Way Machine: Why a weapon is the one thing a man builds that never has to come home.
The Wires: How Brennan steered a torpedo from the shore.
The Fortress Weapon: Dover to Singapore, and the price Britain paid.
Never Fired: The most advanced harbour weapon on earth, and the war that never came.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
Australian Dictionary of Biography (1969) 'Brennan, Louis (1852–1932)', Volume 3, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Beanse, A. and Moore, D. (1996) Brennan Torpedo: The History and Operation of the World's First Practicable Guided Weapon, Gosport: Palmerston Forts Society.
Gray, E. (1991) The Devil's Device: Robert Whitehead and the History of the Torpedo, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
Naval Historical Society of Australia (2019) 'Louis Brennan (1852–1932): The Wizard of Oz', Naval Historical Review, Sydney: Naval Historical Society of Australia.
Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) 'Brennan, Louis', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#Australia #History #Engineering #LouisBrennan #Torpedo #GuidedMissile #MilitaryHistory #Victorian #Invention
Why are most of the background images from the mid 20th Century, not of the late 19th Century?
And the imagery of personel of asiatic appearance handling what is obviously not what is being described?