Giovanni Luppis Giovanni Biagio Luppis von Rammer ( 27 August 1813 – 11 January 1875 ) was a Croatian - Italian officer of the Austro - Hungarian Navy who developed the first prototypes of the self - propelled torpedo . Early years . Giovanni Luppis ( or Lupis ) was born in the city of Rijeka ( then Fiume ) in 1813 , which was at the time part of the Illyrian Provinces , but soon passed back to Austria . His parents where Ferdinando Carlo , nobleman of Poreč and Vis and Giovanna Parich , noble of Republic of Dubrovnik . In the city of Rijeka , Giovanni Luppis ' s family has been powerful shipowners . Lupis attended a gymnasium in Rijeka and the Collegio di marina , the Austrian naval academy in Venice . Then he married a noblewoman , the Baroness Elisa de Zotti . He served in the Venezianisch - Österreichische Kriegsmarine ( after 1849 K . u . K Kriegsmarine ) and rose up the ranks to the position of " Frigate Captain " ( " Fregattenkapitan " ) . In 1848 / 1849 he was an officer on the ships that blocked Venice . The " Salvacoste " ( Coastsaver ) . About the middle in the 19th century , an officer of the Austrian Marine Artillery conceived the idea of employing a small boat carrying a large charge of explosives , powered by a steam or an air engine and remotely steered by cable to be used against enemy ships . Upon his death , before he had perfected his invention or made it public , the papers of this anonymous officer came into the possession of Capt . Giovanni Luppis . The second model was built with a clock mechanism as the engine for the propeller . The explosives were in the stern and were ignited through a pistol - like control , which in turn was activated through the bow , the sides or the mast . It had two rudders : one turned to the right , the other to the left , that were moved by ropes / wires from land . After numerous experiments , this design , marked ' 6 m ' , finally performed well enough . He nicknamed it ' Salvacoste ' , Italian for " Coastsaver " . In 1860 , after Luppis had retired from the Navy , he managed to demonstrate the ' 6 m ' design to the emperor Franz Joseph , and it was a success , but the naval commission refused to accept it without better propulsion and control systems . The meeting with Robert Whitehead . In 1864 Rijeka the future mayor Giovanni de Ciotta introduced Luppis to the British machine engineer Robert Whitehead , manager of the local factory ' Stabilimento Tecnico Fiumano ' , with whom he signed a contract to develop the ' salvacoste ' further . Whitehead built a model but decided that the idea was not viable . He did however start to think about the problem of setting off explosive charges remotely below a ship ' s waterline , this being far more effective than above - water bombardment . Whitehead made a device running under water and installed an engine running on compressed air , as well as automatic guidances for the depth and direction . Whitehead had significantly altered the original design , but always credited Lupis with the invention . On 21 December 1866 the first automobile torpedo , now named " Minenschiff " , was officially demonstrated in front of the Austro - Hungarian state commission for evaluation . This model was 355 mm in diameter and 3 . 35 m in length , weighing 136 kg with 8 kg of explosives . The naval commission accepted it , and subsequently on 6 March 1867 the government contracted the inventors for a test production and agreed to pay all the production costs . Whitehead retained the copyrights and even negotiated a new contract with Luppis which gave Whitehead full control of all future sales . On 27 May 1867 , the navy paid 200 , 000 forints in royalties to the inventor . The invention was generally regarded as a promising one , but in the first years of production there were not enough orders , so ' Stabilimento ' went through a crisis and went bankrupt in 1873 . R . Whitehead took it over and at the beginning of 1875 transformed it into a private company called ' Torpedo - Fabrik von Robert Whitehead ' . Giovanni Luppis was given the noble title of Baron von Rammer ( ' the sinker ' ) on 1 August 1869 . He died in the borough ( " frazione " ) of " Torriggia " , in the municipality of Laglio , near Como on 11 January 1875 .