This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location.
Deliver to France
Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Matthew Stewart
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Monturiol's Dream: The Extraordinary Story of the Submarine Inventor Who Wanted to Save the World Hardcover – Bargain Price, June 29, 2004

by Matthew Stewart (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 17 ratings
See all formats and editions
A marvelous the compelling story of the strange and noble life—and dream—of nineteenth-century utopian social revolutionary and self-taught engineer Narcís Monturiol, who invented the world’s first fully operational steam-powered submarine, not as a weapon of war but as a means of saving human life and spreading democracy.Matthew Stewart tells the story of Monturiol from his childhood to his years living the dangerous life of a revolutionary. We see him at the bloody barricades and fleeing—one step ahead of the Barcelona police—to the remote coastline of northern Catalonia. On that shore, watching teams of divers risk their lives gathering coral from the water’s depths for use in the making of jewels, candelabras, and crimson pigment, he finds the true purpose of his life. He saves a man presumed dead from drowning and conceives of a craft that will protect the divers who harvest coral—a safe, hermetically sealed underwater vessel that will make the ocean’s bounty available to the common man.Stewart writes about the building of Monturiol’s how, without scientific education (he was a lawyer by training), Monturiol read books on physics, chemistry, and biology; how he launched a hand-powered prototype submarine capable of reaching depths of sixty feet; how his efforts to gain government support for building a larger submarine were thwarted (his invention was dismissed by one official as having “no useful applications”). We see Monturiol, unwilling to give up on his dream, turn to the artists, poets, and musicians of Barcelona to help him mobilize the public to fund his project, and how he launched his second, much larger vessel five years the most advanced submarine of its day; at more than fifty feet long it displaced seventy-two tons and navigated reliably at depths of up to one hundred feet, with a unique system for eliminating carbon dioxide, replenishing oxygen in the interior cabin, and enabling its crew to remain underwater indefinitely. It had a steam engine for propulsion, a chemical furnace to heat the engine as it generated oxygen for the crew, external lights, portholes, and pincers for harvesting coral and other objects from the deep. It was the first true submarine; the world would not see its equal for another twenty years.And we watch as Monturiol’s revolutionary friends, making use of his utopian ideals and notions of urban planning (a term he originated), forge a new culture for Catalonia and its capital city and create the radical design that resulted in an entirely new Barcelona.
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Pantheon
  4. Publication date
    June 29, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    9.38 x 6.34 x 1.27 inches
  6. See all details
Next slide of product details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Previous set of slides
  1. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
Next set of slides

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000OZ28GU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon (June 29, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.38 x 6.34 x 1.27 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Matthew Stewart

Matthew Stewart

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

E. Ward
5.0 out of 5 stars This is an amazing story of a political revolutionary morphing into an inventor ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is an amazing story of a political revolutionary morphing into an inventor of the modern day submarine.
We see how he changes from trying to help coral divers escape injury to a man obsessed by his invention.
I never expected the book to be AS exciting as it has turned out to be. Love the writing, love the man.
Helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars intelligently designed (written)
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2016
Verified Purchase
the book is written with competency and sincerity: thoroughly researched; intelligently designed (written); sincerely believed by the author. It is a beautiful piece of work.
Helpful
 Report
Bill Larsen-Ruffin
5.0 out of 5 stars A very comprehensive story of an amazing man's life
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2016
Verified Purchase
The book arrived in a very timely fashion, in proper condition. A very comprehensive story of an amazing man's life. Thank you.
Helpful
 Report
Paul Lawrence
5.0 out of 5 stars The story of an inspired dreamer.
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2014
Author Matthew Stewart has here compiled an incredibly interesting tale about a Spanish chap - Narcis Monturio - whose name really should be pivotal in any history of submarines but who is largely forgotten. If anything it is to be hoped that this work redresses the balance and sees more awareness of this prodigious inventor.

The book spends a lot of time - somewhat oddly it seems at first - on discussing Spanish and in particular Catalan politics and the sociological factors at play in the city of Barcelona. The way the average person lived and the way a lot of progressive politicians and identities were pursued makes for grim reading. The reasons for the stagnation and eventual laying low of the once great nation of Spain are not hard to determine from the way political discourse was monitored and vehemently controlled. For a while the reader starts to wonder when we are going to get to the submarine part of proceedings but the extended build up does provide the reader with an excellent grasp of the utopian visions that inspired Monturiol and his friends.

Eventually the book moves into the discussion of the development of the submarine. This is fascinating for the naval buff. The sheer genius and ingenuity of the inventor and the faith he obviously inspired in those willing to bankroll his schemes is incredibly. So much of what he was doing had to be invented from scratch. Meticulous trial and error and prodigious mental energy were required and it seems that Monturiol had these in spades.

As the work progresses it seems hard to credit that Monturiol is so little known. And it is hard to understand how there has not been more heard of the submarines he built. One can only wonder what may have happened has such a man been born into a more progressive nation, or at least one where money for such inventors was not so thin on the ground. Sadly as the book progresses we see the chances of any sort of commercial success or even general celebration of the achievements made by Monturiol slip away. There is a certain forlorn inevitability hanging over the last section of the book and the author is to be congratulated that even this less starry eyed portion of the book has the reader turning pages with alacrity.

The book - which I take to be a labour of love - has a useful index, suggestions for further reading and a couple of pages of notes. It is also interspersed with line drawings and black and white photographs.

A very fine book on an interesting subject that shows how far you can get on dreams alone.
Helpful
 Report
Rob Hardy
5.0 out of 5 stars A Forgotten Submariner
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2004
Narcís Monturiol dreamed of bringing peace and democracy to the whole world. He did not just dream, but he acted. He was an inventor, and he meant for his great invention to become the revolutionary spark to bring humankind into the rosy and egalitarian future. His invention: the most advanced and only reliable submarine of his time, the mid-nineteenth century. In _Monturiol's Dream: The Extraordinary Story of the Submarine Inventor Who Wanted to Save the World_ (Pantheon), Matthew Stewart has written an entertaining biography of the forgotten submariner, whose name is absent even from many histories of the submarine. There are many contingencies that conspired to keep him an unknown, and many tiny events that could have gone differently so that his invention would have descendants and we would know him as "The Father of the Modern Submarine." As it turned out, he was one of those inventors that didn't get the recognition he deserved, and his life only seems successful in retrospect. Nonetheless, he was a fabulous dreamer, thinker, and tinkerer, and deserves the rescue from oblivion provided by this volume.

Monturiol, born in 1819, was a surprise entry into the submarine inventing game. By 1856, he was "pretty much your typical utopian socialist revolutionary." He was not an engineer. He had much to learn, teaching himself the chemistry by which he could produce oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the air. He developed thick glass for portholes, and once he realized how dark it was down there, he developed an external lighting system that worked just fine. He was the first to insist on double hulling for a sub; the external one protected the craft and gave it a hydrodynamic shape (these were good-looking, streamlined vessels that resembled giant fish), while the inner one had the safety sealing to protect the crew. It could dive to 20 meters, although with his perfectionism for safety, he made the craft far more pressure-resistant than that. It was steerable, and was propelled by its crew of sixteen cranking a shaft connected to a propeller. The propulsion system was not up to Monturiol's standards, as it could not reach what he thought was an acceptable minimum speed of three knots. When he realized this, he looked for another way of powering the ship; electrical motors (which would be used on the first military subs of the twentieth century) were not yet feasible, and steam had the hazard of fire within the confines of the vessel. Monturiol performed thousands of experiments to find a heat-producing chemical reaction that would generate steam and also produce oxygen as a useful waste product.

It was a brilliant solution that never got a good try. Monturiol, never a good business planner, eventually had no funds for further prototypes. He had spent years of trying, and had sacrificed parts of his utopian dream to bring his machine into reality: a pacifist, he had tried to get military support; a communist, he had tried for capitalistic backing; an internationalist, he had tried to mine local Catalan enthusiasm. It did no good in the end, as eventually _Ictineo II_ went for scrap, breaking the inventor's heart. He scraped by for himself and his family by taking hack writing jobs and then a job in a brokerage house, eventually working his way up to being a cashier. He continued to invent; one of his later inventions, a method of preserving meat for export, ought to have made him millions, but it only made millions for the man who stole it from him. When submarines became practical in the next century, engineers had to re-learn many of the ideas Monturiol had pioneered, so his actual influence was slight. Nonetheless, after a century of neglect, Barcelona has a street sculpture of his sub, and a life-size mock-up to show just what the graceful craft looked like, and a street named after the inventor. Now with this admiring and well-illustrated biography, Monturiol further takes his belated but rightful place within the ranks of those who developed the submarine.
13 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
James M
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read : science, socialism and barcelona
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2011
I read this book before taking a trip to Barcelona a few years ago and it was really a very, very good book.

There's a lot of science/technology in the book (how he dealt with various issues which had to be addressed to produce an operational submarine) as well as quite a bit about socialism (he was a socialist), catalonian nationalism and barcelona itself.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Danny Coghill
3.0 out of 5 stars Submarine History
Reviewed in Canada on June 20, 2014
Verified Purchase
The book content was more about Monturiol's politics than his submarine genius!
He was a genius when one considers the early nature of his submarine. and its ingenious stem power generation.
Not until Walther's boats in WWII was this concept renewed and today our nuclear submarines are steam driven.
American historians on this subject left him out - which is no way to record history.
The book though used was in very good condition.
Report
Sílvia Batllori
5.0 out of 5 stars Valoración Monturiol's dream
Reviewed in Spain on November 16, 2014
Verified Purchase
Me ha gustado ya que es un libro muy completo: habla sobre historia, sobre tecnología,...
Tiene un vocabulario muy completo y asequible para estudiantes de C1. Lo recomiendo.
Report