A 60-year-old Chinese farmer with no engineering training built a five-ton homemade submarine called Big Black Fish. After seeing someone on television, he invested about 5,000 euros as a hobby and successfully submerged it to a depth of eight meters. His feat reflects how rural talent receives state support with subsidies for innovation, demonstrating that creativity and individual effort can generate useful inventions without technical degrees.
Big Black Fish and its homemade technical solutions 🛠️
The submarine was built from scrap metal and recycled parts, such as an adapted car engine and manually controlled ballast tanks. Without blueprints or complex calculations, the farmer used his intuition to seal joints with industrial glue and weigh it down with lead. The dive to eight meters was achieved after several attempts and adjustments, using a crank to regulate depth. The local government provided subsidies for materials, allowing the project to be completed in six months.
The submarine that doesn't need GPS, just rural intuition 🤿
The most curious thing is that the inventor doesn't know how to swim, but that didn't stop him from piloting his device. When asked how he oriented himself underwater, he replied that he looked through a plexiglass porthole and counted the seconds. If he failed, he surfaced and tried again. At least he doesn't need to ask NATO for permission to navigate his village pond.