Every schoolkid knows that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Right? Well, not according to some. You see, there has been a controversy about who invented the telephone, right from the very beginning. There are actually several claimants. In this post we’ll consider the main controversy, between Bell and Elisha Gray, co-founder of the Western Electric Manufacturing Company.
A little background is in order here. The demonstration of the telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse in 1844 proved the ability to transmit electronic signals over long distances, even across the Atlantic. It wasn’t too much of a conceptual stretch to consider transmitting sounds over telegraph wires, and many people began working on the idea.

Bell, a teacher of deaf children and professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory, had an extensive background in speech and vocalization. He was not an experienced mechanical engineer, however, and while he had a design for a telephone, he did not have a resolution for the problem of reproducing sound. Consider this: Bell’s attorney, Marcellus Bailey, filed Bell’s patent application for the telephone on February 14, 1876. This is the very same day that a patent caveat (announcement of an invention, something like a provisional application today) was filed by William D. Baldwin, the attorney for Gray. According to popular myth, Bell beat Gray to the patent office by a couple of hours and so was awarded the patent. But that is not how the patent office worked. Under patent law of the time, patents were awarded on the basis of who was first to invent, not who was first to file, so the order in which the two applications was received was not important.
What is more interesting is that the patent examiner, Zenas Fisk Wilber, was a war buddy of Marcellus Bailey and owed him money. Wilber testified later that, contrary to Patent Office rules, he showed Bailey Gray’s patent caveat and discussed technical details of it, in particular the idea for a water transmitter for electrically reproducing sound. Wilber also stated that he showed the caveat to Bell himself, and that Bell gave him $100. Bell denied the $100 bribe, but does admit that he and Wilber talked about Gray’s caveat “in general terms”. To add fuel to the controversy, Bell’s patent drawings do not show a transmitter, but the narrative discusses a water transmitter in seven sentences which were “added at the last moment”.
Neither Bell nor Gray had a working prototype on February 14. Wilber, the examiner, did have doubts about Bell’s application and held up Bell’s patent application. Bell met with Wilber to answer questions about the application and satisfy him that Bell’s application was genuine. Wilber was satisfied, and Bell was awarded the patent, number 174,465, on March 7, 1876. Three days later, on March 10, Bell was working with his assistant Thomas Watson, using a water transmitter as a proof of concept. Bell spilled some acid while Watson was in another room and uttered the famous words into his new device “Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you.” This was the first successful transmission of speech electronically. Bell did not continue using the water transmitter (it was impractical for production purposes) and by the time he first demonstrated the telephone publicly at the Centennial Exhibition three months later, in June 1876, he was using an electromagnetic transmitter of his own design. Bell made many public demonstrations in 1876 and 1877, proving that the telephone could transmit speech over long distances.
In late 1877 Gray, after allowing his caveat to expire, challenged Bell’s patent on the grounds that the water transmitter was his idea, not Bell’s. The Patent Office ruled that, while the water transmitter was undoubtedly Gray’s idea, Gray’s failure to take any action until Bell had conclusively proved the utility of the invention deprived him of the right to have his claim considered. Further litigation from Gray and others followed, an astonishing 600 lawsuits in the first 18 years of the Bell Telephone Company’s existence, but Bell’s patent held every time. Thus it was that Bell won the patent controversy and became the father of the telephone, and it’s his name that is known to every schoolkid.
Vox’s Take: It seems to me likely that Bell did indeed “borrow” from Gray’s water transmitter design, at least for a little while as he struggled to get his contraption working. Bell’s dependence on Grays’ water transmitter was short-lived, and he was past it before any public exhibition, but there it was nonetheless and it helped him get past a crucial stage in his efforts. Regardless of the legal implications, I think that Gray should at least be mentioned as a contributor to the invention of the telephone, vs. textbooks giving the impression that Bell was the only person thinking about this marvelous invention and that he came up the design completely on his own. What’s your take?
P.S. The U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 269 in 2002, claiming that it is neither Bell nor Gray, but an Italian-American named Antonio Meucci who should be credited with the invention of the telephone. This resolution, coincidentally introduced by an Italian-American, Rep. Vito Fossella, is just the latest in what appears to be an unsolvable debate.

Sources:
[1] Who is credited as inventing the telephone?, Library of Congress
[2] Elisha Gray – The Race to Patent the Telephone, about.com Inventors
[3] Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy, Wikipedia
[4] News Flash: U.S. House of Representatives Says Alexander Graham Bell Did Not Invent the Telephone, History News Network

Most of us are familiar with the two most common tracks to statehood: first of course, there are the thirteen original colonies which joined together to form the United States. Second, most of the other states were admitted as a territory: additional land, often wilderness, beyond the thirteen colonies was acquired from another country by treaty or purchase. The new land was organized into a territory and when the territory reached a sufficient population and level of development, the territorial government applied for statehood, and was either accepted or rejected by Congress. In all, 31 territories were accepted as states.
However, there are a number of states which are exceptions to the two common routes. Four states were at one time independent republics: Vermont, Texas, California (very briefly) and Hawaii (before it was a territory). Louisiana brought a multitude of states when it was purchased from Napoleon’s First French Republic. The War with Mexico, also a republic, brought a bundle of other states.
There are also four states which at one time were part of another state: Maine was a district of Massachusetts, Kentucky and West Virginia were part of Virginia, and Tennessee was part of North Carolina before it became the Southwest Territory, on its way to becoming a state.

The thirteen original colonies were, of course, part of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Florida was acquired by treaty from the Kingdom of Spain. Alaska was famously purchased from the Russian Empire, an absolute monarchy. But one other state was itself a kingdom before it became a state. This was Hawaii, which was wrested away from the Hawaiians when American and European developers managed to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy, form the independent Republic of Hawaii and put Hawaii on a track to United States annexation and eventual statehood.
Not all territories became states. The Philippines, won from Spain in the Spanish-American War, gained independence from the United States in 1946. The Panama Canal Zone was returned to Panama in 1979. And what about the territories today? There are still sixteen territories of the United States, most of which are small islands. The major territories, which presumably could apply for statehood, are the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the United States Virgin Islands.

Sources:
[1] U.S. state, Wikipedia
[2] Territories of the United States, Wikipedia
[3] Russian America, Wikipedia

Some time ago we visited the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. I had to smile when I saw the name of the North American P-51 Mustang on display there. The P-51 is named “Willit Run?”, but the nose art on this plane is not talking about this particular aircraft or any P-51 for that matter. It’s an inside joke of WWII vintage.

During WWII, as in every big war, private industry is called upon to produce war goods rather than civilian goods – “guns vs. butter”. Henry Ford took on a huge project to contract-build Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers in a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to be built on a farm which Henry Ford owned at Willow Run near Detroit. The facility was to be a prime example of Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy”, conceived and built on an unprecedented scale. Begun in April, 1941, it was the largest enclosed room in the world, with 3.5 million square feet. But Willow Run had a long and troubled construction and start-up time. So long and troubled a start-up, that after two years with little results the public became disillusioned with the project and derisively nicknamed the plant “Willit Run?”.
Ford persevered however, and Willow Run finally hit its stride, eventually producing at the prodigious rate of 650 B-24 bombers per month by August, 1944. At war’s end, Willow Run had produced about half of the 18,000 B-24’s which saw service in the war.
Sources
[1] Willow Run, Wikipedia
[2] Willow Run and the Arsenal of Democracy, Michigan History, Detroit News

You may have noticed – or you may not have. Take a look at a clock face with Roman-style numerals. Most of them show four as “IIII” rather than “IV”. What’s up with that? We were taught in grade school (at least I was) the subtractive notation for Roman Numerals: when you count higher than three or eight you can subtract one from the next highest five or ten and save yourself a numeral. So why don’t clocks do this? Rather, why do they do this for nine but not four?

The simple answer is that this is tradition: that’s the way clock faces have always been made. But that’s not really an answer as to why. Turns out we are mighty long on theories and short on facts as to the origin of this tradition.
Theory One has it that the heavy strokes of “IIII” aesthetically balance out the “VIII” on the other side of the clock, but that theory ignores that “V” does not balance out “VII”, and also ignores the fact that “IIII” was used on the very earliest clocks, which use a 24-hour face.
Theory Two is that clock-makers spelled four as “IIII” because it was more economical: you could cast all the characters needed for a clock face with four “X”s, four “V”s and twenty “I”s. Nice and symmetrical. But this theory ignores the fact that most clocks with cast numerals had the whole number cast as one piece, not as individual characters. Another problem with this theory is that there does not seem to be a decline in the use of “IIII” for clocks with painted faces. And finally, the “IV” saves you three “I”s for a “V”, so that should be more economical.
Theory Three has it that the tradition originated with Roman sundials, and “IIII” was easier for peasants to understand than the use of the subtractive “IV” (this theory relies on the supposition that poor people must also be stupid). Another problem with this theory is that old sundials use “IX” for nine. What? Peasants could figure out nine but not four?
The “Right” Theory – I’m inclined to believe the practice originated something like this: clocks spell the Roman four as “IIII” because that was the common practice in all writings using Roman numbers at the time clocks were invented, around the 13th century. To be sure, the use of subtractive notation was in use at the time, e.g. nine was always “IX”, not “VIIII”, but four was an exception. Why is this? The theory is that “IV” was simply inappropriate for Romans to use for a number, because it was the first two letters, and consequently abbreviation, for “IVPITER”, the Latin script spelling for the god Jupiter. Jupiter was not just any god, he was the king of the gods. So out of respect for Jupiter or perhaps just to avoid misunderstanding, four had to be “IIII”. I first read about this theory in an article by Isaac Asimov some 30 years ago, in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, if I remember correctly. If the theory was good enough for Isaac Asimov, by golly, it’s good enough for me. The real answer may be lost to history, but it’s certainly a fun little anomaly to guess about.
Sources:
[1] FAQ: Roman IIII vs. IV on Clock Dials, UBR, Inc.
[2] Why does a clock face have ‘4’ as ‘IIII’ instead of ‘IV’ ?Askville by Amazon, Askville by Amazon
[3] CLOCKING THE FOURS: A NEW THEORY ABOUT IIII, Paul Lewis Post
[4] Time is racing, www.24hourtime.info

The Boston Molasses Disaster or Boston Molasses Flood is one of the more bizarre disasters in American history. On January 15, 1919 a huge molasses tank failed explosively, sending a flood of hot, sticky, sweet molasses through the streets of Boston’s North End.

The steel tank, operated by the Purity Distilling Company, was 58 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, and held something close to its capacity of 2.5 million gallons. When the tank burst, the concussion of the explosion or “rush of air” was strong enough to knock a truck into Boston Harbor. The splitting seams sent rivets shooting out like bullets, and pieces of steel flew out like shrapnel. The real destruction, however, came from a 7 to 15-foot high, 35-MPH wave of molasses with a pressure of 2 tons per square foot. The molasses swept buildings off their foundations, crushed the girders of an elevated railway and swallowed up dogs, horses and people in its path. 21 people were horribly killed – crushed or burned or drowned in molasses. Another 150 victims were injured. It took six months and 87,000 man-hours to clean up the molasses.
As you might expect, over a hundred lawsuits were brought in the months and years following the disaster. Over 3,000 witnesses testified in court, and 45,000 pages of testimony and arguments were generated. The Purity company tried to blame the tank’s failure on an outside explosion, a bomb planted by an anarchist (the disaster occurred right after World War I, when the “anarchy scare” was at its height). The supposed motive was because the molasses was destined to be made into industrial ethyl-alcohol, which was used in the munitions industry. The prosecution argued that the tank was not reinforced properly and was not properly inspected. Other factors could have come into play, such as the fact that the temperature went from 2°F the prior day to an unseasonably warm 41°F the day of the explosion, and internal pressure could have built up in fermentation or other processes. In addition, the tank had only been filled to capacity eight times, putting a cyclical load on the structure. After 6 years, the trials eventually found no evidence for a bomb and laid the blame on the Purity company. Around a million dollars was paid out to claimants (about 12 million today).
A number of urban legends have persisted in the years following the disaster, such as the one which states that on a hot summer day, one can still smell molasses in the North End. Another legend purports the tank was overfilled in expectation of Prohibition (since molasses is also used to distill into rum). Time has distanced us from the tragic nature of the incident and allows us to appreciate the local’s name for it: “The Boston Molassacre”.
Sources:
[1] What caused the great Boston Molasses Flood?, The Massachusetts Historical Society
[2] The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919, Yankee Magazine
[3] Jan. 15, 1919: Morass of Molasses Mucks Up Boston, Wired Magazine
[4] Boston Molasses Disaster, Wikipedia

(To see all the posts in this series, click here: Naval Armor.)
In our evolution of naval armor series, we’ve so far looked at battleships – those warships built around armor and cannon, designed to be able to survive a “shootin’ match” with another warship and deal a deadly blow to their adversary. As we mentioned in Part 3, the attack on Pearl Harbor spelled the end of the battleship as the premier fighting ship of the World’s navies. The aircraft carrier, with its ability to launch scores of aircraft to project its power, has been the standard ever since. Let’s take a look at the carrier my son served on: the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71).

The Theodore Roosevelt, launched October 27, 1984, was the fourth of the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carriers, our current class of supercarrier. The offensive power of the aircraft carrier is, of course, based on the air wing that it carries, and we won’t go into those details here. But how about defense? What does a modern aircraft carrier do to protect itself? Well, there’s not a continuation of the thicker, stronger armor paradigm. With two nuclear reactors for propulsion, the design could have called for thick steel armor all around the ship. But the ship’s designers recognized that a big, passive coat of armor was both wasteful and inefficient. There’s no armor plate, but the Theodore Roosevelt does have a double-hull design and 2.5 inch Kevlar armor around especially critical areas.
Rather, today’s carriers rely on active defensive systems to counter threats before they reach the ship.

Closest-in is the Mark 15 Phalanx, or Close-In Weapons System (CIWS, pronounced “sea-whiz”). This unit features its own searching and tracking radar control directing a six-barrel, 20 mm gatling gun. The gun fires heavy-metal (tungsten or depleted uranium) projectiles at either 3,000 or 4,500 rounds per minute. This incredible rate of fire puts a veritable wall of metal out in front of a close incoming threat such as an airplane or anti-ship missile.
Further out, up to 10 nautical miles, the Theodore Roosevelt uses the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missile system for airborne threats. In addition to shooting at incoming threats, there are a number of deceptions the ship can employ, including chaff and infrared flares to confuse missile guidance systems and underwater towed decoys to defend against torpedoes. But all of these are defenses of last resort. Optimally, no threat could get close enough to challenge the ship directly. A Nimitz-class carrier has a capacity for 90 fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, some of which are offensive and some of which are employed in a defensive air umbrella around the ship.

Finally, the Navy does not send a five billion-dollar ship out to face danger alone. The carrier has never fought alone – we saw in Part 3 that part of the USS Missouri’s duties was to protect the carriers. Today, the carrier is in the center of a carrier strike group (CSG). The composition varies, but a CSG might consist of the carrier, two guided missile cruisers, two anti-aircraft warships, one or two anti-submarine destroyers or frigates and possibly a submarine. Together these ships provide mutual support, forming a multi-layered defense that would present a formidable challenge to any opponent.

Sources:
[1] USS Theodore Roosevelt Official Website
[2] USS Theodore Roosevelt, NavSource Online
[3] USS Theodore Roosevelt, Navy Site, Department of Defense
[4] USS Theodore Roosevelt, Wikipedia

No portrait of him exists, so his statue is an interpretation by the artist. At 21 years of age, this man was hanged as a spy in New York. His last words are reported to have been “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Who was he? Click on the photo to see.

Alfred “Alferd” Packer is Colorado’s (indeed, the Nation’s) only convicted cannibal. In the winter of 1874, Alferd Packer and his companions became lost and snow-bound in the mountains near Gunnison, Colorado. In the spring, Packer emerged alone from the wilderness and was accused of murdering and eating his companions. Packer maintained his innocence, but District Court Judge Melville Gerry was unmoved. Although not supported by the official court records, legend has it that the judge told Packer at his sentencing, “Stand up, Alferd Packer, you voracious, man-eating, son-of-a-bitch. There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them.”

Sources:
[1] Alferd Packer, Wikipedia

(To see all the posts in this series, click here: Naval Armor.)
In part three of our survey of the evolution of naval armor, let’s look at the pinnacle of the heavily armored ship, the World War II battleship. The last battleship commissioned by the US Navy was the USS Missouri (BB-63). The Missouri – nicknamed “Mighty Mo” – was numbered the third of four Iowa-class battleships, but was the last one completed. She was launched January 29, 1944, at the height of World War II.

The USS Monitor, which we discussed in Part 2, was a radically new design, an untested experiment which during the pressure of war went from laying the keel to launch in 118 days. The Missouri on the other hand was the culmination of all of our years of experience and evolutionary development of big-gun, heavy-armor warships. Her main armament was nine 16-inch “Mark 7” guns, arranged in three turrets of three guns each. Each individual Mark 7 is 66 feet long and weighs 267,900 pounds with the breech. A Mark 7 can hurl a high-explosive shell weighing 2,700 pounds (a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle weighs 1,764 pounds) some 24 miles, and land it in an area the size of a tennis court. Just one salvo from one turret exceeded the normal 6,000 pound bomb capacity of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
As for armor, she carried 7.5 inch steel deck armor, a 12.1 inch armor belt to protect against torpedoes, and her gunners enjoyed 19.7 inch armor on the turrets. Her turrets had nearly the thickness of the USS Constitution’s sides, but with steel, not oak. This was not even the most armor seen during the war. The largest battleship ever, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato, had 26 inch armor on the face of her main turrets.
Remember in Part 2 the dents in the turret of the Monitor, caused by Confederate shells? The Missouri also suffered a dent in her armor, caused not by shells but by a Japanese Zero in a kamikaze attack on April 11, 1945. The dent remains to this day.
The Missouri participated in many of the famous battles of the Pacific in World War II: Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Japanese home islands. She became famous as the site of the Japanese surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945 while anchored in Tokyo Bay, ending World War II. The Missouri fought again in Korea, supporting the Incheon Landings, screening aircraft carriers and bombarding North Korean positions. With the end of the Korean war, she was mothballed (put into the reserve fleet) in 1955 after only 11 years of service. There she remained until 1984 when she was reactivated and modernized as part of the “600 ship Navy” program. She last fought in Operation Desert Storm – the 1990 Gulf War in Iraq. During this fight she had far greater firepower than the Mark 7 guns, for during her modernization she was fitted to launch “Tomahawk” cruise missiles. On March 31, 1992 she left active service again – as the last United States battleship to be decommissioned. Today she is a museum ship anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, watching over the USS Arizona Memorial. It is fitting that our last battleship resides at Pearl Harbor, because the Japanese carrier attack of December 7, 1941 proved conclusively that the battleship had been superseded. The aircraft carrier, not the battleship, was to be the future means of projecting naval power.

Sources:
[1] USS Missouri (BB-63), 1944-1998, Selected Views, Naval Historical Center
[2] USS Missouri BB-63, Wikipedia
[3] Battleship Missouri Memorial, USSMissouri.com

(To see all the posts in this series, click here: Naval Armor.)
The birth of “modern” naval warfare is sometimes traced to the first engagement between two ships protected by iron armor – the “ironclads”. The Battle of Hampton Roads, more famously referred to as the Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, occurred on March 8-9, 1862 during the U.S. Civil War.

CSS Virginia (Merrimac)
The USS Merrimac was a wooden-hulled screw frigate launched by the U.S. Navy in 1855. She was in port, due for an engine overhaul at the outbreak of war on April 12, 1861. When the Gosport Navy Yard (later Norfolk Navy Yard) was in danger of being overrun on April 20 by Confederate land forces, the Navy set fire to and scuttled her before abandoning the yard. The Merrimac sank in shallow water without burning completely. The Confederates, desperate for ships, were able to salvage the hulk. Afraid that the North was planning a fleet of ironclads, they decided to rebuild her as an ironclad ram. She was fitted with a four-inch thick iron deck and a sloping casemate (fortified enclosure or roof) of two two-inch plates of railroad iron backed by 24 inches of pine and oak. They mounted ten guns (cannons) on her, four along each side and one swiveling gun each for the bow and stern. Finally, she was fitted with an eight-foot long, 1,500 pound iron ram at her bow. They renamed the rebuilt ship the CSS Virginia. The additional weight was almost too much for the Virginia, whose keel was of course not designed for it. The Virginia also had to make do with the original steam engines meant for the much lighter Merrimac, and so she was woefully underpowered and slow. The additional weight also caused her to draft deeper than before at up to 22 feet, limiting her use in rivers and coastal waters. She was top-heavy, and between the underpowered engines and deep draft she was ”little more manageable than a timber-raft” – she required 45 minutes to turn a complete circle. She wasn’t fit for the open ocean either, so her prospects seemed iffy. In fact, some Confederate newspapers had already pronounced her a failure before her first battle.
USS Monitor
The North did not actually have plans in motion to build an ironclad, but they heard about the new ironclad being built by the Confederates, and so embarked on a crash program to produce an ironclad of their own. The Navy employed Swedish engineer John Ericsson who came up with a radical new design. The USS Monitor featured just two large-caliber (11 inch) Dahlgren guns, but these were mounted in a swiveling turret so they could fire in any direction. Most of the ship lay under the water line beneath a flat deck of one inch armor supported by heavy timbers. Her sides had five inch-thick iron plates, backed by oak. The turret was comprised of eight layers of one inch iron plate, bolted together. A ninth plate inside acted as a sound shield. This new style of ship was like nothing anyone had seen before. One Confederate officer thought she looked like a “cheese-box on a raft”. The Monitor had a very modest seven to eight foot draft, making her very suitable for rivers and shallow coastal waters. Like the Virginia, the Monitor was not fit for the open ocean – with the armored turret she was top-heavy, and with the shallow draft she was vulnerable in rough seas.
Battle of Hampton Roads
On March 8, 1862, the Virginia was supposed to go out on sea trials, but the captain instead decided to contest the Federal blockade of the waters around Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia – a body of water called Hampton Roads. The wooden Federal fleet saw an approaching ship that looked like a “barn roof” and soon realized that they were up against the rumored Confederate ironclad. They joined in battle, but they were completely outclassed. The shells from the Union guns simply bounced off Virginia’s sloping iron casemate. Ignoring a small union gunboat, Virginia first attacked and sank the USS Cumberland by ramming her below the water line. The ram became stuck in Cumberland’s hull and nearly dragged the Virginia down with the Cumberland, but then the ram broke off and Virginia backed away. The Cumberland died fighting, firing her guns as long as they were above water.
Next, Virginia engaged the USS Congress. After an hour, the Congress was badly damaged and surrendered. At this point a Union shore battery fired on the Virginia and she retaliated by firing “hot shot” (cannon shot heated red-hot) at the Congress, which caught fire and burned the rest of the day. The Virginia then tried to engage the USS Minnesota, which had run aground in shallow water. But because of her deep draft, the Virginia was not able to get within range. The battle was suspended when Virginia’s captain became concerned they would miss the high tide and not be able to make it over a sand bar and back to port.
At dawn the next day, March 9, Virginia returned to finish off the Minnesota. During the night, however, the Federals had managed to reach the scene of battle with the new USS Monitor. As the Virginia approached the Minnesota, the Monitor interceded. The resulting engagement lasted most of the day, with the Monitor and the Virginia pounding each other, often at point-blank range, with little effect. Despite their other flaws, each ship’s armor was very effective against the other’s shells. At one point the Virginia tried to ram the smaller Monitor, but without her iron ram this tactic failed. At the end, the Monitor and the Virginia disengaged, each thinking the other was quitting, and each claiming victory.
Vox’s Take:
You know how some innovations can go for decades before they catch the world’s attention? That’s not the case here. News of the “Battle of the Ironclads” sent a shock wave through the navies of the world, as everyone recognized immediately that wooden-hulled ships were hopelessly obsolete compared to the ironclads. The revolving turret was also an extremely important innovation, because for the first time you did not have to position the whole ship in order to bring your guns to bear on an opponent. This made the Monitor, not the Virginia, the model for future warship development.
Neither ship fought again, and neither survived the year. In May, the Virginia was ordered blown up by her own Navy in order to avoid capture, and in December the Monitor foundered and sank in rough seas. However, their one battle changed the course of naval warfare as radically as the switch from sails to steam.

Sources:
[1] Battle_of_Hampton_Roads, Wikipedia
[2] The Battle of the Ironclads, CivilWarHome.com
[3] USS Monitor (1862-1862), Naval Historical Center
[4] National Archives