General Dynamics Electric Boat is a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation. It has been the primary builder of submarines for the United States Navy for more than 100 years.The company's main facilities are a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, a hull-fabrication and outfitting facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and a design and engineering facility in New London, Connecticut.HistoryThe company was founded in 1899 by Isaac Rice as the Electric Boat Company to build John Philip Holland's submersible designs, which were developed at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Holland VI was the first submarine that this shipyard built, later renamed. On 11 April 1900, it became the first modern submarine to be purchased and commissioned into the United States Navy. The success of Holland VI created a demand for follow-up models that began with the prototype submersible Fulton built at Electric Boat (EB). Some foreign navies were interested in John Holland's latest submarine designs, and so purchased the rights to build them under licensing contracts through the Electric Boat Company; these included Great Britain's Royal Navy, Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy, Russia's Imperial Russian Navy, and the Netherlands' Royal Netherlands Navy.
