DAVID BUSHNELL AND HIS TURTLE

After his father's death, Bushnell sold his share of the Connecticut farm where he was born, using the money to go to Yale. There, in the early days of the American Revolution, he began work on an extraordinary invention—an egg-shaped underwater vehicle with a treadle-operated screw propeller to be used to transport mines. Bad luck caused the several attempts to blow up British ships with this device to fail, but not because of faulty technology; barely paid for his pains, Bushnell went on to another life, but his inventions were valued by Washington himself and later adopted by Fulton, who didn't bother to credit their creator. With meager margins and carefully drawn but undistinguished illustrations, this has a textbook air; but Swanson's clear descriptions of how Bushnell worked at solving his many problems make a fascinating story that illuminates both the technology and the society of his day. Bibliography of sources. (Nonfiction. 7- 10)*justify no*