I became interested in technology during the first world war because of the huge effects it had on society. I wanted to investigate further into the new inventions of the time to understand more fully:
1. Why world war 1 was a time of such great technological improvements and
2. What were some of these changes and why were they so important?
World War One saw many huge "improvements" in weapons and technology. New inventions and discoveries such as gas, planes, machine guns and tanks took the concept of war to a whole new level. Wars had been traditionally fought on foot by soldiers armed with swords or guns. But with the invention and development of planes and advanced battle ships, fights took place on air, land and sea. Airplanes especially broke the concept of being bound to the Earth, and changed the way many people viewed possibility. They saw that the opportunities associated with technology were enormous, and traditional boundaries had to be changed or eliminated completely. With the discovery of poisonous gas came another new battle strategy. Doctors could not find a cure for the slow, painful death associated with these toxins and so many soldiers died without ever seeing any fighting. Another new innovation was a more effective rifle, and a gun that would shoot through the rotating propeller blades of a plane. These changes and inventions all took place very quickly, and so new war strategies were constantly being developed and adapted, along with the general need for social change they initiated.
I thought this topic was really interesting! It's weird how technology we are so accustomed to, such as planes, were so new that battles tactics had to be completely rearranged to account for this new technology. It's horrible to think about the poisonous gas being used. It was a new technology that nobody had ever used before, and therefore nobody knew how truly terrible it was. Now, we cannot use poisonous gas in battle because of the torture it causes the people who die of it. It just goes to show how new technology made for new, more dangerous warfare.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting how much of the the technology we use today was first inspired by means of war, showing that war's effects extends beyond the battlefields.
ReplyDeleteI think it's amazing how drastically warfare can change with each improvement in weaponry. I never really thought about how poison gas changed war's strategic aspects or that gas was absolutely irreversible. This must have been a major factor in the development of trench warfare. Because gas could kill so effectively in the trench environment, it added to the changing dangers of war.
ReplyDeleteThis post really emphasizes how many new inventions and changes were created by war. For me, this raises many questions. There is a well known phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention," meaning that new inventions are created to fill need. This post makes me wonder: was war really necessary for all of those technological advancements to happen?
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