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Ivan Blaž Lupis Vukić (Giovanni Biagio Luppis) (1813/1814 – 1875) was a Croatian naval engineer who had invented the first self-propelled torpedo.

Lupis was born in Nakovana on Pelješac peninsula in today's Croatia. He attended a gymnasium in Rijeka, than naval academy in Venice, Italy.

Started serving in the Austro-Hungarian Navy where he kept rising up to the rank of the captain of frigate. In 1848/49 he was an officer on the ships that blockaded Venice, and later commandeered a frigate against Sardinians and France.

Lupis thought about how to defend the Dalmatian coast from intrusions of the Italian Garibaldines, and decided to work on technical innovations to counter that threat. He envisioned device for destroying ships which would be unmanned and controlled from the land, whose explosive charges would detonate on impact. His first model prototype was just one meter long, with glass wings and controlled via long ropes from the coast. Due to a primitive implementation, it didn't succeed.

The second model was built with a clock mechanism as the engine for the propeller. The explosive charges were in the stern and were ignited through the pistol-like control mechanism which again was activated through the bow, the sides or the mast. It had two rudders turned to the both right and left side, controlled trough the wires from the land. After numerous experiments, this missiledesign, marked as the "6 m", did perform accordering the plan and was instantly nicknamed as the "the coast saviour".

In 1860, when Lupis already retired from the Navy, he managed to demonstrate the "6 m" design to the emperor Franz Joseph. Demonstration was the success, but the naval commission refused to accept it without better propulsion and control systems.

In 1864 the city mayor of Rijeka Ivan Ciotta introduced the inventor to the British machine engineer Robert Whitehead, with whom Lupis signed a contract to develop the torpedo further. The Briton significantly altered the original design, but was always crediting Lupis with the invention. New device was running under water and an engine running on compressed air was installed. Also, an automatic guidance system for the depth and direction was built in.

On December 21, 1866, Whitehead's and Lupis' 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 long. 8 kg of explosives was contained in the body weighing 136 kg. The naval commission accepted it. On March 6, 1867, the government contracted the inventors for a test production and agreed to pay all the production costs. On May 27, 1867, the navy paid 200,000 forints of royalties to the inventors. Whitehead then moved to Rijeka where he opened the first torpedo factory in 1873 by converting an old metal smelting plant.

Lupis died in Torrigga, Lago di Como.

• 1813 births
• 1875 deaths
• Croatian soldiers
• Croatian inventors
• Weapon designers