while the second was a battery of 16 mortars. The latter was the prototype for the "Abbot Quad" arrangement, developed by Major Abbot and used for the first 12-inch coast defense mortar deployments in the 1890s. In 1871 a tunnel was built connecting the upper 27-gun battery with the incomplete fort. In 1890 the Engineer School experimented with the Sims torpedo, an electric self-propelled torpedo partly designed by Thomas Edison. Endicott era (1890-1916) In 1885 the Endicott Board made sweeping recommendations for new coast defenses, and among them was upgrading Fort Totten. The fort was named in 1898 after former Chief of Engineers Major General Joseph Gilbert Totten, the premier American designer of forts in the early 19th Century, and new gun batteries were built 1897-1904 as part of the Coast Defenses of Eastern New York as follows: Battery King was built by converting two of the four pits of the earlier mortar battery to concrete, with four mortars in each pit. A mine casemate, part of a controlled underwater minefield, was also built circa 1900, replacing an experimental 1876 casemate. Unusually, the Coast Defenses of Eastern New York were soon superseded by the concurrently-built Coast Defenses of Long Island Sound, with most of the guns of the former removed in World War I, and almost all of Fort Totten (except the 3-inch guns) disarmed by 1935. In 1901 the Engineer School was transferred to Washington, DC, and the emerging United States Army Coast Artillery Corps took over the further development of coast defenses. World War I After the American entry into World War I a number of changes took place at most stateside coast defense forts. With the threat from German surface ships unlikely, they became more important as mobilization and training centers. Their garrisons were reduced to provide trained heavy artillery crews for the Western Front, and many of their weapons were removed with a view to getting them into the fight eventually. The Coast Artillery operated almost all US heavy and railway artillery in that war, primarily weapons purchased from the French and British. Fort Totten's 5-inch, 8-inch, 10-inch, and 12-inch batteries were dismounted in 1917-1918 as potential railway or, in the case of the 5-inchers, field artillery. Battery Mahan's two 12-inch guns and Battery Sumner's pair of 8-inch guns were transferred to the railway artillery program. Battery Graham's pair of 10-inch guns were transferred to Fort