JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2878

This image (from the Illustrated London News for April 26 1871) shows a plan of the top floor of a revolving battery designed by M. Baltard in 1831.  This idea is probably ancient, though it really only had major technological legs by the 19th century. Even though Baltard is given some fair credit for the modern rediscovery of the revolving turret–and in this short article he is given premier status–there were earlier engineers at work before him.  For example, in the earliest part of the 19th century Col. John Stevens designed a saucer-shaped floating battery that was supposed to be able to fire in any direction; T.R. Timbly–slightly after Baltard–applied in the U.S. Patent Office in June 1843 for a device he called a “metallic revolving fort”.  Then came the great John Ericsson–very long on accomplishments but very short now in modern memory, he is also one of those memorialized men in marble in DC for whom people have almost no modern recognition–who in 1854 produced an “impregnable battery revolving cupola”, which led to his great innovation on the Monitor.  And as we recall, the Monitor’s defeat of the Merrimack in Hampton Roads in 1861 spelled the coming end of the wooden ship of the line–metal ships with mounted revolving turrets fore and aft would prove entirely too far superior to the 19th century wooden ship.