Technological Advances thanks to War

[Racoon]

It seems the greatest technological advances occur and are necessitated by War and conflict.

 

I watched a WWII documentary last night, about the massive railroad engineering and construction along the river Kwai in Burma and Thailand by the Japanese.. Or it should be said, built upon the thousands and thousands of POW lives lost...

 

Well, the Japanese managed nothing short of an engineering miracle and feat by carving hundreds of miles of railroad through dense forest and adverse terrain, and then could transport troops and supplies much safer.

 

the Technological advancement? the Smart Bomb. :eek:

 

Dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air, and trying to hit the railroad target that was only about 4 feet wide, was futile.

 

So the Americans devised the first "smart" bomb by adding a remote controlled propeller on the bomb, that the bomberpilot could manuever with remote control and adjust in flight to help it hit their rightful target!

It was a smashing success, and the new Smart Bombs were able to destroy many of the railroad bridges vital to the Japanese... (it was called Anoz or Azon, or something)

 

So, from catapults to sonar, what amzing advances in Technology as a result of warfare come to mind?

[Qfwfq]

So, from catapults to sonar, what amzing advances in Technology as a result of warfare come to mind?

Tons. Loads. Heaps.

 

It'a a great pity that "civilization" is only willing to fund research when it's for war, else it's up to the capital of investors seeking returns reasonably soon. The end of the cold war also marked a decline in funding for research into things such as particle physics, it's a political miracle that CERN will be running tests for the Higgs boson.

[InfiniteNow]

I'd imagine innumerable medical techniques we use today are a direct consequence of war and it's impact on the human body.

[Michaelangelica]

It seems the greatest technological advances occur and are necessitated by War and conflict.

yes the computer was one Invented by Alan Turing (et al) to handle huge amounts of information intercepted by the allied forces due to the early breaking of enigma.

It was an interrogation technique that when a German soldier was captured they would tell him the name of his dog, his wife, kids, when last on leave, all sorts of trivia. Given that the Allies knew all this the German POW would often let slip more important information.

 

I watched a WWII documentary last night, about the massive railroad engineering and construction along the river Kwai in Burma and Thailand by the Japanese.. Or it should be said, built upon the thousands and thousands of POW lives lost...

A lot of Australians died there. the Japanese were brutal bastards and have still not owned up to their history of inhumane treatment of POWs. many Ozzie's came back as skeletons

 

Well, the Japanese managed nothing short of an engineering miracle and feat by carving hundreds of miles of railroad through dense forest and adverse terrain, and then could transport troops and supplies much safer.

very clever clap clap

 

the Technological advancement? the Smart Bomb. B)

 

Dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air, and trying to hit the railroad target that was only about 4 feet wide, was futile.

 

So the Americans devised the first "smart" bomb by adding a remote controlled propeller on the bomb, that the bomber pilot could maneuver with remote control and adjust in flight to help it hit their rightful target!

It was a smashing success, and the new Smart Bombs were able to destroy many of the railroad bridges vital to the Japanese... (it was called Anoz or Azon, or something)

Most allied bombing was ineffectual unless you wanted to raise a city like Dresden to the ground.The Mitsubishi factory in Tokyo remained virtually intact after the war as it was not made of wood. Very little was left of wooden Tokyo

I believe they were at one stage training pigeons to guide bombs (Kamikaze pigeons!) They were trained to pick at a central point in the guidance system to keep the bomb on target.

Also dolphins in guiding torpedoes.

 

So, from catapults to sonar, what amazing advances in Technology as a result of warfare come to mind?

Atomic bombs

Serious spying (the CIA & FBI learnt from the British)

Computers

Rockets (Courtesy of the Russia and USA protection of Von Braun and assorted other war criminals)

Radar

Incendry bombs

Land mines?

Synthetic rubber

Radar guidance bombing

Jet planes

DDT

Penicillin

Tanks

Timeless music and

Red Poppies

[Jay-qu]

Theres nothing like the funding for scientists to go nuts when the threat of total annihilation is bearing down on you!

 

Space travel probably would have been a lot slower if there had not been research into rocketry.

[Michaelangelica]

Theres nothing like the funding for scientists to go nuts when the threat of total annihilation is bearing down on you!

yes I don't think we yet know half of what happened in WW2.

The threat of total annihilation was very real especially to Jews, Gypsies and anyone else non -Aryan

 

Space travel probably would have been a lot slower if there had not been research into rocketry.

Yes certainly so

It is a pity it should come from such a bloody parent.

 

It seems we need to find a new planet soon as we have buggered up this one!

michael

[Turtle]

Necessity is a mother of invention, but not the mother of invention. I'll leave the argument of whether or not war is necessary to another thread, but I thought of Alfred Nobel and his invention of dynamite. He thought it would make people's lives better by its use in civil engineering, but saw it turned to war. So, I think war & its makers may sometimes deserve a 'thanks for nothing' for screwing up a well intended technological advance that wasn't meant to do harm. B)

[Michaelangelica]

Alfred Nobel and his invention of dynamite. He thought it would make people's lives better by its use in civil engineering,

Hate to be a Nerd; but he did not discover nitroglycerin. He just developed safe ways of handling it. In the process killing his brother and destroying his father's health.

[Boerseun]

I think wartime economies is simply a more efficient way to channel much-needed resources to R&D and big-scale engineering that might not serve an immediate civil purpose.

 

"Sir, I've an idea for a hammer that could transform into a light sabre, thereby decreasing the amount of stuff to be carried by our troops."

"Have you made a working prototype?"

"Er... not as yet, sir, but I'm sure it'll work..."

"How much will it cost?"

"Ten gazillion dollars, sir."

"You got it. We need light sabre-able hammers, and we need them yesterday!"

[Turtle]

I'll let Micha square up the formatting, but I get the gist. I said nothing about nitroglycerine, and it is proper, if not ubiquitous, to say Nobel 'invented dynamite.' Invention is putting things already extant together in a unique way and/or for a unique purpose, as opposed to discovery, which is finding something new.

My point was that war did not prompt Nobel, but rather altruistic motivations. B)

[Michaelangelica]

My point was that war did not prompt Nobel, but rather altruistic motivations. :confused:

Dynamite is just nitroglycerine stuck in clay to make it easier to handle, so I guess he did "invent" Dynamite

I think he was out to make money to restore the family fortunes. Altruistic? maybe?, maybe not?

Nobel's brothers Ludvig and Robert, in the meantime, had developed newly discovered oilfields near Baku (now in Azerbaijan) along the Caspian Sea and had themselves become immensely wealthy.

Alfred's worldwide interests in explosives, along with his own holdings in his brothers' companies in Russia, brought him a large fortune.

In 1893 he became interested in Sweden's arms industry, and the following year he bought an ironworks at Bofors, near Varmland, that became the nucleus of the well-known Bofors arms factory.

Besides explosives, Nobel made many other inventions, such as artificial silk and leather, and altogether he registered more than 350 patents in various countries.

. . .

Although Nobel held the patents to dynamite and his other explosives, he was in constant conflict with competitors who stole his processes, a fact that forced him into protracted patent litigation on several occasions.

. . .

At his death his worldwide business empire consisted of more than 90 factories manufacturing explosives and ammunition.

. . .

a bizarre incident in 1888 may have triggered the train of reflection that culminated in his bequest for the Nobel Prizes. That year Alfred's brother Ludvig had died while staying in Cannes, France.

The French newspapers reported Ludvig's death but confused him with Alfred, and one paper sported the headline "Le marchand de la mort est mort" ("The merchant of death is dead.") Perhaps Alfred Nobel established the prizes to avoid precisely the sort of posthumous reputation suggested by this premature obituary

http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/427_33.html

 

My Great- Grandfathers Name was Albert Shrapnel. The name "Shrapnel" lost favour after the War (WW1) and the family stoped using it.

 

Shrapnel yet another invention or perhaps "Technological Advance" of War?

 

 

The word Shrapnel is used by the general public and media to describe munition fragments; however, this popular usage is not technically correct. The term is now used to describe all types of high velocity debris thrown out from an explosion, and makes no differentiation to the process which created or produced the debris.

The Oxford English Dictionary documents that the term Shrapnel is often used to describe fragments or shot intentionally included in explosive devices, such as pipe casings, nails, or ball bearings.

Nobel's high explosives ended up replacing Schrapnel

During the initial stages of World War I, shrapnel was widely used by all sides to attack massed advancing troops in the open, but later dropped and the high explosive shell became the predominant nature of 'explosive' shell used.

The dropping of the shrapnel shell from use was due to the advent of trench warfare; the shrapnel was unable to cut the barbed wire entanglements in no man's land, crater the ground, or to defeat troops under cover, all of which were required as a precursor to an attack.

 

With the advent of relatively insensitive high explosives which could be used as the filling for shells, it was found that the casing of a properly designed HE shell fragmented so effectively that additional shot was not required.

For example, the detonation of an average 105 mm shell produces several thousand high velocity (1,000 to 1,500 m/s) fragments, a lethal (at close range) blast overpressure and, if a surface or sub-surface burst, a useful cratering and anti-material effect — all in a munition much less complex to make than the later versions of the shrapnel (sic) shell.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrapnel

[Turtle]

Dynamite is just nitroglycerine stuck in clay to make it easier to handle, so I guess he did "invent" Dynamite

I think he was out to make money to restore the family fortunes. Altruistic? maybe?, maybe not?

Excellent research! I change my position and declare Nobel a dirty rotten scoundrel. :eek2: :eek_big: Seems I misread the thread's intent and I was looking for counter examples.:hihi:

 

So, from catapults to sonar, what amzing advances in Technology as a result of warfare come to mind?

 

Alexander The Great and his engineers invented the torsion-spring ballista so they could mount them on moving platforms and bash Tyre to a pulp. It worked splendidly,thanks to war! :D

[Michaelangelica]

Excellent research! I change my position and declare Nobel a dirty rotten scoundrel. :eek2: :eek_big: Seems I misread the thread's intent and I was looking for counter examples.:hihi:

LOL LOL LOL !!

You don't have to go from black to white.

He might have been a nice guy like me?:D

[Qfwfq]

Dynamite is just nitroglycerine stuck in clay to make it easier to handle, so I guess he did "invent" Dynamite

Exactly. You had missed Turtle's correct point, which was quite simply that not all inventions are a result of war research.

 

Leonardo da Vinci first had the idea of submarines, but he refused to give details after it struck him that the evil of mankind would use the idea to break the hulls of enemy ships from underneath.

[alexander]

Leonardo was also the first person who came up with the Parachute and what looks like an early helicopter(flying machine) and an airplane. Also he was the first person to experiment with photography by using an opening in a dark building and photosensitive paint and a lense...

 

Michaelangelica actually it is not quite clay. Nobel did not invent nitroglycerin either because he was not a very good chemist at all.

 

What happened was this: in his early career he helped a brilliant chemist from the university of Torino if i am not mistaken Sobrero, who eventually created nitroglycerin, Nobel was helping him find a way to make it more stable and he came up with the best way of manufacturing it, the funding for future research goes dead after a test for the military, so Nobel moves to Russia to continue his research, what Nobel did invent is the detonator because at a lake, just outside of St.Petersburg one early morning Nobel uses a black powder detonator to unset a vial of nitroglycerin. Then he moves to Germany where he meets an American, who offers to buy the patent of nitroglycerin for a laughable sum, Nobel declines and continues his work of building a safe manufacturing facility to manufacture (Sweedish blasting oil) the story goes on and on, until one of his facilities blows up, and one morning, when Nobel overlooks an unload of vials of C3H5N3O9, and it just so happens that one of the vials leaked some of the fluid onto a bed of a very fine sand (also known as diatomacios earth) that was being used as a cushion to transport the explosive. So Nobel goes on to research this clay-like mixture to find that 3 parts earth to one part oily liquid makes for the best combination in power and stability of the explosive, it makes nitroglycerin many more times resistant to impact detonations. BTW the detonators have changed very little since then, its still a small black powder charge or in cases where more power is needed (such as grenades) a small dynamite charge.

 

Oh Novel goes on to be the riches man in the world and as he becomes older he becomes more and more of a loony, and eventually regrets the fact that he made dynamite such a big thing and creates a Peace Prize fund today known as the Novel Prize... :hihi:

[alexander]

as to millitary and great inventions, yes there have been some great inventions due to military conflict, but also dont forget that there have been great many wars in the history of human kind, it may be that some were being developed way before wars, just that at a time of a war someone said that they can use this invention to kill people and finally thos scientist who were researching some next big tech breakthrough got the funding they needed to finish their research :hihi:

[eric l]

A lot has been said in this tread about Nobel, and I think I should point out a Nobel prize winner : Andreas Haber. Why ? Haber received the Nobel prize for his invention of a process to use atmospheric nitrogen for producing ammonia, which is a base product for fertilizers. So his invention could be considered worthwhile for all mankind, and a contribution to peace.

But the same ammonia that can be used for fertilizers, can also be converted into nitro compounds for explosives. During the first world war, Germany (and its allies) had a very limited acces to natural nitrates. They would have run out of ammo very soon, hadn't it been for the Haber-Bosch process to use atmospheric nitrogen.

So Mr. Haber received his Nobel prize for an invention that actually make this war last mucht longer !!!