The first published picture of a submarine cam from the artistic hand of William Bourne in the year 1580. He was an English innkeeper and scientific dilettante. Bourne was the first to offer idea of why ships float(by displacing its weight of water)and then he described a mechanisem by which: "It is possible to make a ship or boate that may goe under the water unto the bottome, and so to come up again at your pleasure. [If] Any magnitude of body that is in the water...having alwaies but one weight, may be made bigger or lesser, then it Shall swimme when you would, and sinke when you list..."

In 1874 a schoolteacher by the name of John Phillip Holland submitted a design to the Secretary of the Navy that passes the paperwork to a subordinate. He said that no one would wollingly fo underwater in such a craft.

Holland's first design was a 15.5 foot-long one man boat with a foot-operated treadle to drive not only the propeller, but a one cubic foot ballast tank and discharge the "used" air