why is electricity considered to reign supreme on board the Nautilus
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Originally I didn’t give much thought to the Nautilus power system, simply presuming Nemo used one or more big electric motors. But approaching a 19th century work from an end of the 20th century perspective can lead to errors of interpretation. It takes an awful lot of torque to turn a massive six meter propeller and shaft at any speed, let alone 120 revolutions a second (many reviewers think this is a typo for revolutions per minute). Moreover, the propeller is turning under water to move a boat weighing some 1500 tons at high speed. The text also attributes high accelerations to the Nautilus. No wonder M. Gagneux concludes the performance described in the novel is unobtainable.
Steve Corbett remembered the Nautilus hull as copper plates on an iron hull and Nemo's statement of getting his power from the sea and thought, "two kinds of metal, immersed in sea water? The Nautilus is a giant battery!" Steve began to develop this idea in a never published module "Raise the Nautilus", for the role-playing adventure game Space 1889. Well, the text actually describes the hull as constructed of iron, but the thought is a good one. Nemo even raises the possibility of using the ocean itself as a kind of battery before describing a "more practical system" of batteries we can view as conventional but was certainly advanced for Victorian times.