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The scientific and technological legacies of World War II became a double-edged sword that helped usher in a modern way of living for postwar Americans, while also launching the conflicts of the Cold War. When looking at wartime technology that gained commercial value after World War II, it is impossible to ignore the small, palm-sized device ...
Technology played a significant role in World War II. Some of the technologies used during the war were developed during the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, much was developed in response to needs and lessons learned during the war, while others were beginning to be developed as the war ended. Many wars have had major effects on the ...
May 22, 2023 · The conduct and outcome of World War II was fundamentally shaped by science and technology. Intensive war-time research and development led to breakthrough technologies including radar, guided missiles, proximity fuzes, mass-produced penicillin, and atomic weapons, and scientific discoveries that advanced weather, wave and surf forecasting and ...
- The Jeep
- Superglue
- The Jet Engine
- Synthetic Rubber
- The Atomic Bomb
- Radar
- The Microwave Oven
- The Electronic Computer
- Duct Tape
- Penicillin
Desperate for a universally effective military vehicle during World War Two, the United States military called on the nation’s car manufacturers to submit designs. The desired vehicle, they stipulated, had to be light and maneuverable, able to hold at least 3 soldiers at once and capable of traversing thick mud and steep gradients. The winning mode...
In 1942, Dr Harry Coover was toiling away trying to design new clear lenses for gun sights when he made a serendipitous discovery. He tested the chemical compound cyanoacrylate, but rejected it because of its intense adhesive properties. The material proved useful in other fields, though, primarily as a ‘super glue’. Spray-on super glue was later p...
On 27 August 1939, 5 days before the Nazis invaded Poland, a Heinkel He 178 plane took flight over Germany. It was the first successful turbojet flight in history. The Allies followed suit on 15 May 1941, when a turbojet-propelled aircraft was flown over RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire, England. While jet planesultimately didn’t have a decisive impact...
Throughout World War Two, rubber was essential to military operations. It was used for vehicle treads and machinery, as well as soldiers’ footwear, clothing and equipment. Constructing a single US tank could demand as much as a ton of rubber. So, when Japan seized accessto the rubber trees in Southeast Asia in 1942, the Allies were forced to find a...
The construction of the atomic bombin the United States required a network of high-tech laboratories, several tons of uranium ore, more than $2 billion of investment and some 125,000 workers and scientists. The resulting technology, a functioning nuclear bomb, led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and by extension, Japanese surrender in Wo...
While radar technology was in use before World War Two, it was developed significantly and implemented on a vast scale during the conflict. Radar systems were installed along Britain’s south and east coasts in the months before World War Two. And during the Battle of Britainin 1940, the technology afforded the British military an early warning of i...
One of the engineers who helped pioneer radar for use in World War Two, Percy Spencer, went on to find a popular commercial use for the technology after the war. As the much-cited story goes, Spencer was testing a radar machine when the chocolate in his pocket melted. He began placing different foods in proximity of the device and experimented with...
The first electronic computer was invented at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking headquarters during World War Two. Colossus, as the machine became known, was an electronic device designed to decipher Nazi messagesencrypted using the Lorenz code. Across the Atlantic in 1946, American experts created the first general-purpose electronic computer...
Duct tape owes its existence to Vesta Stoudt, a munitions factory worker from Illinois. Concerned that the US military was sealing its ammo cases with unreliable and permeable paper tape, Stoudt set about inventing a sturdier, cloth-backed, waterproof tape. Convinced by the promise of her new technology, Stoudt wrote to President Franklin D. Roosev...
Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. After the outbreak of World War Two, the antibiotic was popularised and produced on a staggering scale. The drug proved invaluable on the battlefield, fending off infection and hugely increasing survival rates among injured soldiers. Remarkably, the United States manufac...
In conclusion, World War II was the first “high tech war,” if we define that modern phrase to mean a war fought with new technologies that were specifically invented for that particular war. The atomic bombs were but the most visible of thousands of small inventions, from materials in the home to training films to new ways of seeing the enemy that contributed to the war effort.
As with many other aspects of the Allied war effort, Canada played an important role. Much of the research found civilian uses after the war and has helped shape today's modern world. Whenever you heat food in a microwave oven or use washer fluid to clear off a car windshield, to name just two examples, you can credit the groundbreaking work done by Canadian scientists during the Second World War.
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technology played a significant part in World War II and was of such importance that some historians have claimed that radar helped the Allies win the war more than any other piece of technology, including the atomic bomb. After the war came to an end, cavity magnetrons found a new place away from war planes and aircraft carriers and
