Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes
I think the 1954 movie suggested atomic power for the Nautilus, unless I'm confusing it with USS Nautilus SSN-571, first atomic-powered submarine. Verne's original was powered by the scientific magic of the day -- electricity, before the power of the atom became a good excuse for anything in Golden Age SF.
("Bunsen's contrivance", referred to elsewhere in the novel as a "Bunsen pile", is a kind of electric battery, though the real one didn't use sodium.)
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I believe somewhere in the usual translations is the phrase "disintegration of seawater" which in the early 50s may have been taken as some sort of nuclear process.
However, in light of the excerpts provided (and thank you very much for those) it seems likely that Verne intended a sort of chemical process.
In Gurps Steampunk Bill Stoddard called this system (whatever it was) "Advanced Primary Batteries" and gave it stats equal to advanced TL8 batteries from Ve2. I don't really think this was high enough to support the level of performance Verne implied. The Nautlius would have had to refuel no less than every 3 days even while loitering.
If I had t try a more detailed technobabbling I might make motions towards an anachronistic fuel cell with the "burned" coal being actually a process we'd call "coal gasification" and the sodium......well, if the sodium has to do something it can be part of some magical scheme for extracting oxygen from seawater.
Of course, if you're "disintegrating" the seawater that would imply breaking the H2O down to get you O2 and leaves you wondering what you're doing with the hydrogen. O2 and hydrogen would be ideal for a fuel cell and all you have to do is violate conservation of energy.
Verne apparently wasn't much of a chemist, probably not even for his time. Atomic power is a technobabble upgrade and would work much better.
To return to the OP's need it would also work better for his submarine freighter scheme than any sort of diesel-snorkel arrangement. Snorkels are a late WWII development and thus only 10 years before working nuclear power so you're not saving that much in SoD.