Dreadnought's cumulative revolution

Dreadnought, like Victory and Warrior, was a political statement as well as a combat vessel. None of its defining systems was wholly new: turbines had developed for a decade, steam machinery for much longer, and turreted guns for roughly half a century. The revolution lay in combining them into a reliable ship with twenty-one-knot speed and an eight-gun long-range broadside that most pre-dreadnoughts could not match. Speed could help control the geometry of an engagement, while six forward-firing heavy guns gave the ship exceptional power even when closing an opponent. The closing comparison measures the century's change through gun count, from the massed batteries of sailing first rates to ten heavy guns, eight of them in Dreadnought's broadside.