Civil War Tank (1860s)

“ALMOST EVERY WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORY HAS inspired valuable innovations in military technology. The Civil War …saw the first major use in the United States of rapid-fire weapons, land and naval mines, observation balloons, and ironclad ships, among other inventions. One of the most farsighted (if impractical) schemes of that conflict was devised in 1862 by an Indianapolis machine-shop owner named Albert E. Redstone. He proposed to build an armorclad, steam-operated “engine of war”—what today would be called a tank. “  See

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2001/1/2001_1_64.shtml

for more on this device.  Redstone’s weapon profiled in this piece from American Heritage.Com sounds suspiciously like the land monitor I featured in an early post – would be interesting to know if Redstone ever built a working model of his device!