The American engineer Robert Fulton (Fulton, Robert) built one of the earliest submersible craft in 1800 in France under a grant from Napoleon. A collapsible mast and sail provided surface propulsion, and a hand-turned propeller drove the craft when submerged. A notable feature was the copper sheets over the iron-ribbed hull. Despite some experimental successes in diving and even in sinking ships, Fulton's Nautilus failed to attract development support from either the French or the British.

In 1870 Jules Verne's classic science-fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published, describing the voyage of Captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine.

In 1886 Andrew Campbell and James Ash of England built a Nautilus submarine driven by electric motors powered by a storage battery; it augured the development of the submarine powered by internal-combustion engines on the surface and by electric-battery power when submerged.

The name Nautilus was chosen for the U.S. Navy vessel launched Jan. 21, 1954, as the first submarine capable of prolonged, instead of temporary, submersion. Powered by propulsion turbines that were driven by steam produced by a nuclear reactor, the Nautilus was capable of traveling submerged at speeds in excess of 20 knots and furthermore could maintain such a speed almost indefinitely. Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines used during World War II, the Nautilus was 319 feet (97 m) long and displaced 3,180 tons. On Aug. 1–5, 1958, the Nautilus, under Commander William R. Anderson, made a historic underwater cruise from Point Barrow, Alaska, to the Greenland Sea, passing completely beneath the thick ice cap of the North Pole. The Nautilus set many standards for future nuclear submarines, including extensive protection against possible radiation contamination and auxiliary diesel-electric power. The vessel was decommissioned in 1980 and went on exhibit, beginning in 1985, at the U.S.S. Nautilus Memorial and Submarine Force Museum in New London, Conn.