 In naval usage, the American Robert Fulton introduced the name to refer to a towed gunpowder charge used by his French submarine (first tested in 1800) to demonstrate that it could sink warships.Torpedo-like weapons were first proposed many centuries before they were successfully developed.For example, in 1275, Arab engineer Hasan al-Rammah – who worked as a military scientist for the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt – wrote that it might be possible to create a projectile resembling "an egg", which propelled itself through water, whilst carrying "fire".