USS Nautilus became the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine when it entered service in 1954.
The United States Navy commissioned Nautilus on 30 September 1954. Its nuclear reactor supplied heat for steam turbines, allowing the submarine to remain underwater far longer than diesel-electric submarines, which had to surface or snorkel to recharge batteries.
Nautilus was built by General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut. The boat’s name echoed the fictional submarine in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, although the real vessel was a major engineering project rather than a literary creation.
Nautilus later made the first voyage under the North Pole in 1958 during Operation Sunshine. That achievement is separate from becoming the first nuclear-powered submarine: the earlier milestone concerns propulsion, while the later one concerns an under-ice voyage.