Why navies wanted repeatable engines

The innovator-refiner distinction exposes a naval procurement problem. Merchant ships moving from one known point to another could accept experimental machinery earlier, but fleets needed reliable, repeatable engines across combat groups deployed worldwide. Early marine engines behaved as individual pieces of engineering, helping to explain why naval engineers formed a distinct professional branch. Later boiler and engine standardisation helped create the institutional conditions for the Fisher reforms. USS Enterprise (CVN-65), whose eight early reactors each had individual chemistry, provides a modern comparison: nominally similar machinery could still demand unit-specific operating knowledge. A navy can study a technology eagerly while delaying wide adoption until its machinery can be operated, maintained, and standardised at fleet scale.