On 21 January 1954, in a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, a huge black submarine slid down a slipway into the icy waters of the Thames River. Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady, swung a bottle of champagne against its hull. The crowd roared. The submarine was the USS Nautilus, named after Captain Nemo's submarine in Jules Verne's old novel - and it was about to make every other submarine on Earth obsolete.
Old submarines ran on diesel engines and batteries, which meant they could stay underwater for only a day or two before having to surface for air and fuel. The Nautilus was different. Inside its hull sat a small nuclear reactor - a tiny core of uranium so powerful it could push the sub through the ocean for years on a single load. Engineers led by Admiral Hyman Rickover had spent eight years arguing, designing, and quietly building the thing. On its first sea trial in 1955 the captain radioed a famous message: 'Underway on nuclear power.'
Three years later, on 3 August 1958, the Nautilus did something no ship had ever done - it sailed underneath the polar ice cap and crossed the geographic North Pole submerged. It travelled 1,830 miles under solid ice. The Nautilus is now retired and sits as a museum in Groton, where visitors can climb through its narrow corridors. But nearly every modern submarine, including the giant boats that today's navies rely on, traces back to the bold reactor in that one black hull.
