The ideas and people behind Dreadnought

Dreadnought drew on work already completed for the preceding Lord Nelson class, including its gun and turret designs. Two or perhaps three more Lord Nelsons might have been built had Dreadnought not displaced them, so the new ship redirected construction as well as design. Captain William Pakenham's observations of the Battle of Tsushima helped Fisher argue for speed and heavier long-range fire. Vittorio Cuniberti published an all-big-gun ideal whose layout was closer to the Lord Nelson class than to Dreadnought. Percy Scott pressed the practical case for coordinating heavy guns at long range, and Charles Parsons supplied the turbine technology needed for sustained high speed. Existing hardware, combat evidence, gunnery thought, and propulsion engineering all fed into the design.