The exhibition “Torpedo – first in the world” has already been in my neighbourhood for a few years, but in April 2019 I visited it for the first time. The exhibition was open for a group of German tourists, so I asked if I could also be a “German tourist”. Usually, you have to call for a visit because it is not open daily. Also, when I visited the torpedo exhibition they were preparing some exhibits for the exhibition in Rostock.
In 2007 a group of “torpedo” enthusiast gathered around the Rijeka City Musem, and everything else is history. The creator of the exhibition is captain Goran Pernjek, a specialist about the historical development of the torpedoes, and Ivo Mileusnić, a senior curator of the Maritime and Historical Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka. The torpedo exhibition was first opened in 2015, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the invention of the torpedo.
The famous story of the Rijeka torpedo begins with the collaboration of the Rijeka inventor Giovanni Luppis and the engineer Roberto Whitehead, but that is the subject for another story. At the Torpedo exhibition, you can find the first torpedoes and numerous torpedo instruments, torpedo parts and tools and of course the story about the great inventors Luppis and Whitehead.