- From radar and tanks,
to the World Wide Web,
these pieces of battle tech have changed the way
we operate in our everyday lives
and in the trenches.
We're counting down the battle tech
that changed military conflict forever.
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Racing onto our list,
[grandiose voice] it's chariots of fire.
[normal voice] Okay, no, actually,
it's just regular chariots sans fire.
Uh, sorry. We got excited.
Chariots were two-wheeled vehicles
drawn by horses that normally carried
a driver and a fighter,
armed with bows and arrows or javelins.
With a chariot, warriors could shoot enemies
from a distance while on the move,
making themselves into a moving target
that was harder to hit.
Serpentine!
Wheeled vehicles probably originated
in Mesopotamia, around 3,000 BCE.
But it took the development of the lighter spoked wheel
around 2,000 BCE to make the war chariot possible.
The use of chariots in battle also marked
the first use of horses in warfare.
Apparently up to this point,
no one had thought to ride
a chariot-less horse into battle.
It would be another thousand years
before saddles and stirrups,
which allowed for effective mounted combat,
to be developed.
The Hittites used chariots
to secure their first kingdom,
around 1,700 BCE.
And soon, chariots became a staple
in empires throughout the Middle East,
India, Babylonia, China and Persia.
These badass horse-drawn carriages
were a symbol of power in warfare
across the world,
until their use began declining
around 500 BCE.
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♪ Row, row, row your trireme gently into battle ♪
These ore-powered ships were used by Persians,
Phoenicians, and Greeks in the 700s BCE.
Triremes were built with a thin shell of planks
that kept the boat light and able to travel
at speeds up to 8 miles per hour,
largely powered by the strength of 170 rowers.
Talk about manpower.
Triremes often sported a ram used to pierce
the hulls of enemy warships at sea.
Unfortunately, these onboard battering rams
were usually not strong enough to sink enemy ships,
so Triremes also crewed up with spearmen and bowmen
to attack above water
and attempt to board enemy ships.
Triremes were used during the Battle of Salamis,
between the Hellenic League and the Persian armada,
under the rule of Xerxes I,
which ensured Greek autonomy
and allowed Athens to take the center stage
in the Aegean.
Score one for Triremes.
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Exploding onto the scene in 850 CE was gunpowder.
While any explosive mixture used as a propelling charge
in guns or blasting agents
can actually be classified as gunpowder,
the first iteration was made from saltpeter, sulfur,
and charcoal, now known as black powder.
Black powder originated in China,
where it was first used for fireworks and signals,
and later in a primitive gun called huo qiang,
which channeled the explosive power
of the powder through a cylinder.
By the late 13th century,
guns made of brass or iron were being developed,
and larger firearms, such as cannons,
would soon follow.
Traded on the Silk Road,
recipes for gunpowder had reached
the Islamic world and Europe by the 13th century.
Gunpowder gave birth to a new type of soldier,
and transformed warfare forever.
It is still used in firearms to this day.
First used in the 1600s,
repeaters, or more technically
repeating rifles, are a rifled shoulder arm
with a spring-loaded box magazine
containing metallic cartridges,
which are fed into the chamber by lever, pump,
or semiautomatic mechanism.
Before repeaters were available,
soldiers carried muskets that were dangerous,
inefficient, and unreliable.
By the mid-1800s, the revolving cylinder rifles
from Miller and Colt became the most common,
and the lever-action 7-shot Spencer Repeater,
and the 16-shot Henry Rifle,
were used by troops in the American Civil War.
These firearms allowed troops to fire
from greater distance than ever before
and unload consecutively more rounds
without having to reload,
forever changing the landscape of warfare.
Developed by Jean-Joseph Etienne in 1859,
the internal combustion engine would go on to be put to work
in stationary power plants, early automobiles,
motor boats, and machine tools.
By burning a combination of fuel and air,
internal combustion engines convert the energy
released by burning fuel
into useful mechanical movement.
Internal combustion engines would go on to play
a huge part in World War I,
changing the speed, range, and terrain of war,
by enabling tanks, supply trucks,
planes, and submarines to come into play,
changing the battlefield forever.
Some trace the origins of the submarine
to David Bushnell's "Turtle,"
which attacked British ships during the Revolutionary War
in New York Harbor in 1776.
Or perhaps Dutchman Cornelius van Drebbel's
1620 vessel "Drebbel I,"
thought to be the first working submarine.
Or you might even say it dates back to 332 BCE,
when Alexander the Great was said to have been lowered
into the sea to study fish.
But as far as we're concerned,
the birth of the modern submarine
came in 1897 from John Philip Holland,
who combined the electric motor, battery,
and internal combustion engine.
By the mid-1900s, these types of submarines
were commonly used in warfare,
most famously, the U-boats in World War II.
Nuclear powered submarines hit the scene
in the mid-1950s,
with the introduction of the USS "Nautilus."
And today, submarines are an essential part
of the U.S. Navy,
used for ballistic missile deployment,
intelligence gathering, and special forces operations.
Developed by the British in response to trench warfare,
the tank was built
with wide conveyor belt-like tracks,
to crush obstacles that had stopped
previous infantry attacks.
Tanks allowed troops to advance farther
and attack enemy lines when armored cars
couldn't push through.
When the prototype tank, "Little Willie,"
rolled off the English assembly line
in 1915,
the Brits were hopeful it would change
warfare forever.
They were wrong-- at first.
The initial prototype was too heavy and too slow,
often getting stuck in trenches.
So the inventors of "Little Willie" improved
on the prototype,
and soon released the second version,
known as "Big Willie," in 1916.
"Big Willie" made its battlefield debut
in the First Battle of the Somme
on September 15, 1916.
Through the remainder of the war,
tank designs would keep improving,
and soon they became one of the most dominant machines
on the battlefield.
Tanks have provided infantry support
and allowed for travel over broken ground
from World War I through today.
Perhaps the most impactful piece
of World War II battle tech was the cavity magnetron
that was developed by John Randall and Harry Boot
in 1940.
Though the first magnetron had been developed
by H. Gerdien in 1910,
Boot and Randall made
their magnetron tube out of copper,
rather than the previously used glass.
Now the tube's output wavelengths
could be tuned efficiently by drilling cavities
into the block,
creating shorter and more accurate waves.
These developments
made centimeter band radar practical,
meaning that radar systems could now be integrated
into smaller command spaces,
such as planes and ships.
Thanks to this technology,
pilots could access scans of the ground
to see their targets at night,
and bombers could target submarines
just below the surface, up to 6 miles away.
The implications were incredibly significant,
and changed warfare forever.
Many believe that the cavity magnetron
made a significant difference in the outcome
of World War II.
Said theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer,
as he quoted the "Bhagavad Gita,"
after witnessing the first successful detonation
of the atomic bomb he helped to develop in 1945.
Oppenheimer would come to be known
as the father of the atomic bomb,
pioneering the transformation of nuclear fission
into one of the most destructive forces
known to man.
In August of 1945,
two of these bombs were detonated by U.S. forces,
over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
during World War II.
Their use resulted in the instant death
of over 120,000 people,
and the fallout caused many more thousands of fatalities
and long-lasting injuries to the people of these regions
during the following decades.
Eventually, the existence of these weapons
would result in the Cold War nuclear arms race,
which held the threat that any nuclear state
could launch a nuclear attack
and kill millions within minutes.
Thankfully, since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
the world has not had to witness
any more such events to this day.
Based on technology from old ground radio devices
used in World War II, GPS was born
in the Space Race era of the Cold War.
In 1960, the first satellite navigation system,
Transit, was used to provide position updates
to the United States ballistic missile force
once per hour.
During the 1970s and '80s,
the U.S. fully updated their use of satellites
to support Navigation System with Timing and Ranging,
AKA NAVSTAR,
and also made them available for civilian use.
Today, GPS is a space-based radio navigation system,
owned by the U.S. government,
and operated by the U.S. Space Force
for national defense, homeland security,
civil, commercial, and scientific needs.
The military embraces GPS as an essential part
of virtually every weapons system,
and every day civilians embrace it
as an essential part of virtually every cell phone
and smartwatch on the market.
The final piece of battle tech on our list is
also the home of Myspace.
Dial up, it's the Internet--
which was first invented for military purposes
during the Cold War.
Seriously. Google it.
In 1966, ARPANET,
or Advanced Research Projects Agency Network,
was created and funded
by the U.S. Defense Department,
as a communication link
between military and university computers
that wouldn't be disrupted by bombs or enemy spies.
For ARPANET to be useful to forces in the field,
it had to be accessible more broadly.
Cue the Internet.
By 1996, the growing global Internet
went mainstream with the World Wide Web,
and was accessible for the average citizen,
bringing us endless scrolls
of enriching cultural experiences
like Club Penguin and BuzzFeed,
and, of course, the deep holes of YouTube,
where you are right now.
Hi, there.
What a wild ride.
This list ranged from gunpowder
and nuclear bombs, all the way to the home
of this very video, the World Wide Web.
Did we miss anything?
Be sure to let us know in the comments,
so we can Google it
or blow it up.
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