History of military technology facts for kids
The way science gets money from the military has hugely changed how scientific research is done and what it creates since the early 1900s. Especially after World War I, advanced technologies based on science became super important for a successful military.
World War I is often called "the chemists' war." This is because of the wide use of poison gas and the need for nitrates and powerful high explosives. Poison gas, like chlorine from German factories, was first used in 1915. Scientists on both sides quickly worked to make stronger chemicals and find ways to protect against them. Physicists also helped by developing wireless communication and sound-based ways to find U-boats (submarines). This created the first long-term links between university science and the military.
World War II led to a huge increase in military money for science, especially for physics. Besides the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, British and American work on radar was very important. Radar helped detect enemy ships and planes. It also led to the radar-based proximity fuze, which made bombs explode at the best time. Math-based cryptography (code-breaking), meteorology (weather science), and rocket science were also key to the war effort. Advances made during the war had a big impact on these fields for a long time.
The technologies used at the end of World War II—like jet aircraft, radar, proximity fuzes, and the atomic bomb—were very different from what existed before. Military leaders then believed that new technology was vital for winning future wars. The start of the Cold War made the connections between military groups and university science even stronger, especially in the United States and the Soviet Union. Even during peacetime, military funding kept growing. Money also went to social sciences as well as natural sciences. New fields like digital computing were born because the military supported them. After the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union broke apart, military funding for science went down a lot. However, much of the American military-scientific complex (the link between the military and science) is still in place.
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How Military Funding Changed Science
Since World War II, the huge amount of military money for science has led to many studies about its effects. Historians like Paul Forman have debated how much military funding changed scientific research. Some argue that military money completely redirected science, especially physics, towards practical uses. They say that military technologies became the basis for even basic science research. This meant the very culture of science was shaped by working with military planners.
Others, like Daniel Kevles, believe that while military funding gave scientists many new chances and greatly expanded physics research, scientists mostly kept their freedom to think and explore.
Early Science and Military Technology
Before the 1900s, the military sometimes supported scientific work, but these were usually separate events. Often, knowledge from technology was more important for science than science was for technology. For example, Thermodynamics (the study of heat and energy) partly came from military technology. One idea for the first law of thermodynamics came from Count Rumford watching the heat made when boring cannon barrels.
Mathematics was important for making Greek catapults and other weapons. But studying how objects fly (called ballistics) also helped math grow. Galileo even tried to sell his telescope as a military tool to the Republic of Venice before using it to look at the sky. Generally, military technology was developed by skilled workers and inventors, not formal scientists, until the 1800s.
Even craft-based military technologies were not usually paid for by the military at first. Instead, inventors made weapons and then tried to get military leaders interested. After engineering became a profession in the 1700s, governments tried to use science and engineering for specific goals, but often failed. Before the French Revolution, French artillery officers were trained as engineers. They tried to make weapons manufacturing more organized, using engineering ideas and interchangeable parts. This was even before Eli Whitney did similar work in the U.S.
During the French Revolution, scientists also tried to create "weapons more powerful than any we possess" for the new French Republic. However, the revolutionary army couldn't pay for such work. These early efforts usually didn't lead to useful military results. A different outcome was the longitude prize in the 1700s. The British government offered money for an accurate way to find a ship's longitude at sea, which was vital for the navy. A clockmaker named John Harrison, who was not a formal scientist, won it. Still, the navy's need for astronomy did help more astronomers develop better tools.
Through the 1800s, science and technology became closer, especially with electrical and sound inventions. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the military started using more machines. This included repeating rifles with smokeless powder, long-range artillery, high explosives, machine guns, and mechanized transport. Telegraph and later wireless communication also appeared on battlefields. Still, independent inventors, scientists, and engineers mostly created these big changes in military technology. Battleships were an exception, as they needed large, organized efforts to build.
World War I and Between the Wars
World War I was the first time science was used on a large scale for military purposes. Before the war, the American military had only a few small labs. Independent inventors and companies did most of the work. In Europe, military-led science research was also very small.
New technologies led to trench warfare, where armies dug into the ground. This made it hard for fast attacks to succeed. Fortified positions with machine guns and artillery caused many deaths but no real progress. Militaries then asked scientists and engineers for even newer technologies. Tanks and aircraft had some impact, but the use of poison gas had a huge psychological effect, though it didn't give either side a clear win. The war eventually came down to having enough supplies, which military-funded science also helped with. This was linked to the chemical industry and chemical warfare.
Germany started using gas partly because naval blockades limited their supply of nitrate for explosives. But their huge dye industry could easily make chlorine and other organic chemicals. German factories were fully used for the war. Fritz Haber and other industrial scientists wanted to help Germany. They became closely involved with the military, testing the best ways to make and deliver chemical weapons. Even though the idea for gas warfare came from outside the military, later developments were like military-funded research because industry and the nation were so closely linked in Germany.
After Germany's first chlorine attack in May 1915, the British quickly hired scientists to develop their own gas weapons. Gas research grew on both sides. Chlorine was followed by phosgene, different tear gases, and mustard gas. Much research was done on how other gases, like hydrogen cyanide and arsenic compounds, affected the body. The British built a large research facility at Porton Down from scratch. This place is still an important military research center today. Unlike many earlier military-funded science projects, the research at Porton Down didn't stop when the war ended. They tried to create a good research environment for top scientists, and chemical weapons development continued in secret through the years between the wars and into World War II. German military-backed gas research didn't start again until the Nazi era, after the 1936 discovery of tabun, the first nerve agent, found during insecticide research.
In the United States, engineers and physicists competed for military money during World War I. Many inventors, led by Thomas Edison and his new Naval Consulting Board, created thousands of inventions to help the war. Academic scientists worked through the National Research Council (NRC), led by Robert Millikan. Finding submarines was the most important problem both groups wanted to solve, as German U-boats were sinking many supply ships going from the U.S. to England. Edison's Board produced few useful inventions. But NRC research led to somewhat successful sound-based ways to find submarines and hidden artillery. They also made useful navigation and photography equipment for aircraft. Because academic science helped solve specific military problems, the NRC stayed active after the war, though it slowly became less connected to the military.
Many industrial and university chemists and physicists worked for the military during World War I. But post-war research by the Royal Engineers Experimental Station at Porton Down and the continued work of the National Research Council were exceptions. Wartime chemistry funding was a temporary change for a field mostly driven by industry and later medicine. Physics became closer to industry than to the military. However, modern meteorology (weather science) was largely built with military funding. During World War I, France's civilian weather system was mostly taken over by the military. Military aircraft and the effect of wind on gas attacks meant weather advice was in high demand. The French army also created its own weather service, retraining scientists from other fields to work there. After the war, the military kept control of French meteorology, sending weather experts to French colonies and linking weather services with the growing air force. Most of the growth in European meteorology in the early 1900s was directly due to military funding. World War II would similarly change American meteorology, moving from training weather experts through hands-on learning to a university-based, science-focused system.
World War II and Science
If World War I was the chemists' war, World War II was the physicists' war. Like other total wars, it's hard to separate military funding from other military-science teamwork during World War II. Even before the invasion of Poland, strong feelings of nationalism were present in the German physics community. So, physicists were almost certain to join the military effort after the rise of National Socialism. German and Allied scientists started looking into the possibility of a nuclear bomb in 1939. By 1942, their militaries were heavily involved. The German nuclear energy project had two separate teams: one led by Werner Heisenberg (civilian-controlled) and one led by Kurt Diebner (military-controlled). The military-led team focused more on making a bomb and got more money from the Nazis, though neither team succeeded in making one.
In the U.S., the Manhattan Project and other projects by the Office of Scientific Research and Development created a much larger military-science effort. Its size was much bigger than any previous military-funded research. Work by British and American scientists made them very hopeful about a nuclear chain reaction. As physicists convinced military leaders about the power of nuclear weapons, funding for development quickly increased. Many large labs were built across the U.S. for different parts of the bomb project. Existing facilities also changed to work on bomb-related tasks. Some were run by universities, others by the government, but all were funded and directed by the military. Germany surrendered in May 1945, but this did almost nothing to slow the project. After Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many scientists went back to universities or companies. But the Manhattan Project's setup was too big and effective to be completely shut down. It became the model for future military-science work in the U.S. and other countries.
Other wartime physics research, especially in rocketry and radar technology, was less famous but very important for the war's outcome. German rocketry aimed to create "Wunderwaffen" (wonder weapons), leading to the V-2 ballistic missile. After the war, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. used the V-2 technology and the German rocket scientists for their own rocket programs. This formed the basis for long-term military-funded rocket, ballistic missile, and later space research. Rocket science was only starting to have an impact in the final years of the war. German rockets caused fear and destruction in London but had limited military importance. Air-to-ground rockets made American air strikes more powerful. Jet aircraft also started being used by the end of the war.
Radar work before and during the war gave the Allies an even bigger advantage. British physicists developed long-wave radar, creating an effective system to detect incoming German air forces. Work on more precise short-wave radar was given to the U.S. Thousands of university physicists and engineers not working on the Manhattan Project did radar work, especially at MIT and Stanford. This led to microwave radar systems that could see more detail in incoming flight formations. Further improvements in microwave technology led to proximity fuzes, which greatly helped the U.S. Navy defend against Japanese bombers. Microwave production and use also became the technical foundation for much post-war defense research, along with the institutional foundation of the Manhattan Project.
American Cold War Science
After World War II, the military was by far the biggest supporter of university science research in the U.S. National labs also continued to do well. After two years of political uncertainty (but with work on nuclear power and bomb making continuing), the Manhattan Project became a permanent part of the government as the Atomic Energy Commission. The Navy, inspired by the success of military-led wartime research, created its own research and development group, the Office of Naval Research. This office would oversee a larger, long-term research program at the Naval Research Laboratory and fund various university research projects. Military money following up on wartime radar research led to huge growth in both electronics research and manufacturing. The Air Force became a separate branch from the Army and set up its own research and development system. The Army also did this, though it invested less in university science than the Navy or Air Force. Meanwhile, the perceived threat from the Soviet Union caused tensions and military budgets to grow quickly.
The Department of Defense mainly funded what was called "physical research." But this included more than just chemistry and physics. Military support helped many fields and even helped create several modern scientific disciplines. For example, at Stanford and MIT, electronics, aerospace engineering, nuclear physics, and materials science—all broadly related to physics—developed in different ways. They became more independent as they grew and worked on defense-related research. What started as labs shared between departments became centers for graduate teaching and new research, thanks to the wide scope of defense funding. The need to keep up with corporate technology research (which got most defense contracts) also pushed many science labs to form close ties with industry.
Computers and Military Funding
The complex history of computer science and computer engineering was shaped almost entirely by military funding in the early days of digital computing. Most basic parts for digital computing were developed through the long-running Whirlwind-SAGE program. This program aimed to create an automated radar shield. Almost unlimited funds allowed two decades of research that only started producing useful technologies by the late 1950s. Even the final SAGE control system had only limited military use. More than with older fields getting military money, the culture of computer science was deeply affected by a Cold War military viewpoint. Indirectly, computer science ideas also had a big effect on psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience through the idea of comparing the mind to a computer.
Earth and Space Sciences
The history of earth science and the history of astrophysics were also closely linked to military goals and funding throughout the Cold War. American geodesy (measuring Earth's shape), oceanography (study of oceans), and seismology (study of earthquakes) grew from small areas into full, independent fields. For several decades, almost all funding in these fields came from the Department of Defense. A main goal that connected these fields was understanding the figure of the Earth—the model of Earth's geography and gravitation. This was essential for accurate ballistic missiles.
In the 1960s, geodesy was the official goal of the satellite program CORONA, but military reconnaissance (spying) was the real reason. Even for geodetic data, new secrecy rules limited teamwork in a field that used to be very international. The "Figure of the Earth" had political importance beyond pure science. Still, geodesists kept enough freedom and found ways around secrecy to use their military research findings to change some basic theories of geodesy. Like geodesy and satellite photography, the start of radio astronomy had a military purpose hidden beneath its official research. Quantum electronics allowed new ways to study the universe and, using the same equipment, monitor Soviet electronic signals.
Military interest in (and funding of) seismology, meteorology, and oceanography was partly due to the defense benefits of physics and geodesy. The immediate goal of funding in these fields was to detect secret nuclear testing and track fallout radiation. This was needed for treaties to limit nuclear weapon technology that earlier military research had created. In particular, being able to monitor underground nuclear explosions was key to a complete rather than partial ban. But the military-funded growth of these fields continued even when there were no urgent military goals. Like with other natural sciences, the military also found it valuable to have 'scientists ready to go' for future research needs.
Life Sciences and Social Sciences
The biological sciences were also affected by military funding, but mostly indirectly, except for medical and genetic research related to nuclear physics. Before the military-industrial-academic complex grew, the most important funding for basic research came from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation. After World War II, new industrial and military funding for the physical sciences caused these groups to stop funding physics research (most early work in high-energy physics and biophysics had been from grants). Instead, they focused on biological and medical research.
The social sciences also received limited military support from the 1940s to the 1960s. However, much defense-focused social science research could be done without a lot of military funding. In the 1950s, social scientists tried to copy the successful teamwork of the physical sciences' Manhattan Project with the behavioral science movement. Social scientists actively tried to show their usefulness to the military. They researched topics like propaganda (used in Korea), decision-making, the psychological and social reasons for communism, and many other topics important during the Cold War. By the 1960s, economists and political scientists offered modernization theory to help with Cold War nation-building. Modernization theory was used by the military in Project Camelot, a study of how revolutions happen, and by the Kennedy administration in its approach to the Vietnam War. Project Camelot was eventually canceled because it raised concerns about scientific objectivity when research was so political. While natural sciences were not yet seen as being corrupted by military and political factors, the social sciences were.
See also
- History of weapons
- Big Science
- Funding of science
- Historiography of science
- History of radar
- History of science and technology
- History of technology
- Military-industrial complex
- Military science
- Military technology
- Military medicine
- Military Wireless Museum in the Midlands
