This photographer built the FIRST Russian submarine
All of mid-19th-century St. Petersburg knew Ivan Alexandrovsky as a photographer and the owner of one of the first photography studios. But, photography was not enough for him – he wanted to invent!
From childhood, Ivan Alexandrovsky (1817–1894) was fond of drawing and studied landscape painting at the Academy of Arts. And when, in the late 1830s, he learned that daguerreotypy had been invented in France, he was fired up by the idea of a new way of capturing reality and went to Paris to study this new art.
By 1853, he had already opened his own studio in the center of St. Petersburg and had become famous throughout the city. People came to him to have portraits made, with a local newspaper writing: “A good painter and a very knowledgeable chemist, Alexandrovsky has devoted himself to light-painting and has become an experienced daguerreotypist and photographer.”
He also created his own experimental models of cameras, showing his talent as an inventor for the first time. And he constantly mastered new methods of photography, including stereoscopic ones. But soon, the successful photographer sharply changed direction toward… underwater navigation!
In 1861, he became the first in Russia to design a submarine with a mechanical engine. He borrowed its shape from fish. Five years later, its first (and successful) test took place.
Emperor Alexander II approved the innovation and enrolled Alexandrovsky in the service of the Naval Department, appointing him a considerable annual salary. The photographer sold his studio and switched to new inventions.
Alexandrovsky also created a prototype of a device for raising sunken ships and presented a project for the world's first self-propelled torpedo mine. At first, the military considered the invention premature, but, just a few years later, they improved it and conducted successful tests.
Alexandrovsky was then dismissed from the department, but he continued to come up with more and more new inventions and, having ruined himself on his projects, died in poverty.
