NationStates Jolt Archive

Can anybody think of a technology/ invention that was invented specifically as a result of war that is currently being used today in a non military capacity?

Please include a date and a brief description of how it was developed.

Pasteurization.

computers
radar
rockets
maybe more...

Pasteurization.

I looked up your answer in google and found this:

"In the mid 1800s, the French scientist Louis Pasteur studied the spoilage of wine and beer and developed a heat treatment that preserved these fluids without greatly altering their flavor. Research on using pasteurization in the cheesemaking process began in 1907 at the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station. It was a joint effort between the USDA and the University of Winconsin, and although the primary goal was to improve quality, product safety was a concern."

The article mentions that pasteurization was developed during WW2 but I'm looking for inventions that specifically came into being as a result of war.

The jet engine?

The first thing that comes to mind is the greatest wartime invention of all time........duct tape!

but I'm looking for inventions that specifically came into being as a result of war.
That's difficult. The only things that were invented during a war for the purposes of a war are weapons, aren't they?

Was the microwave one? Or was that developed by NASA?

Are you kidding? the History channel has a whole series, "Tactical to Practical" devoted to that subject.

That's difficult. The only things that were invented during a war for the purposes of a war are weapons, aren't they?

"Duct tape was first created and manufactured in 1942 (approximate date) by the Johnson and Johnson Permacel Division. The original use was to keep moisture out of the ammunition cases. Because it was waterproof, people referred to the tape as "Duck Tape." Also, the tape was made using cotton duck - similar to what was used in their cloth medical tapes. Military personnel quickly discovered that the tape was very versatile and used it to fix their guns, jeeps, aircraft, etc. After the war, the tape was used in the booming housing industry to connect heating and air conditioning duct work together."

This is what I'm looking for. Inventions that began with a military application but currently have other uses.

The yo yo!

Was the microwave one? Or was that developed by NASA?
Neither, it was invented by accident by a guy building radar sets for Raytheon. He had a chocolate bar in his pocket that started to melt when he stood in front of one.

The first thing that comes to mind is the greatest wartime invention of all time........duct tape!
Are you sure it wasnt the frisbe?
Didnt really serve in a war but it was enlisted...

Penacillian!

The Blood Bank is an American invention created during the second world war from the 'Blood for Britian' campaign. Also there are many plasma products which were created as a direct result of the conflict. Then there's Florence Nightingale's school of nursing thought, not so much an invention I guess. Medicine owes a lot to war, it provides many experiment subjects and case studies.

Ingestible camera: it uses technologies developed for rockets with visual guidance systems, I believe, and now is used to diagnose stomach illnesses.

Firewall software and anti-virus programms- first such programms were originally developed in Israel to protect military computer networks

Instant messager software: also developed in Israel for easier communication between military computer networks. I have personally used the very first, really ancient version of it during my IDF service. The concept was later developed by the Mirabilis start-up company into the first "civilian" instant messenger ICQ, and today the same software is used in the AOL instant messenger (the interface layout STILL bears much resemblance to the military original!)

Are you sure it wasnt the frisbe?
Didnt really serve in a war but it was enlisted...

Penacillian!

Nope, neither Flemming or Florey was in the military (Flemming discovered it in 1928, Florey put it to it's current use in 1935).

The Blood Bank is an American invention created during the second world war from the 'Blood for Britian' campaign. Also there are many plasma products which were created as a direct result of the conflict. Then there's Florence Nightingale's school of nursing thought, not so much an invention I guess. Medicine owes a lot to war, it provides many experiment subjects and case studies.

I keep trying to find the history of plasma on google, but all I get are plasma screen articles. Do you know who is credited with developing plasma products during the war?

Ohh, and has anyone said the internet? The result of the Cold War I think created by the military then given to universities.

Canned food. Napoleon needed a way to feed his troops on the march.
Also, from the same source, refrigeration, for storing large quantities of food to be canned.

Radar and Sonar. Developed to deal with naval warfare necessities.

Air Traffic Control systems, developed to coordinate bombing runs and perfected during the Berlin airlift.

In fact, pretty much everything we know about flight.

DDT, first used to fight a Typhus epidemic in occupied Italy during WW2. Still in use in many parts of the world today.

Tampons. The absorbent material was developed during World War One as a substitute for gauze bandages. In an irony of history, most paratrooper first aid field kits contain a tampon today; they are the perfect size for plugging a bullet wound.

Atomic power.

Pennicillin. Developed in the 1920's and 1930's but only perfected and mass produced due to the vast amounts of casualties of WW2, and the resultant need to find a more effective method of dealing with infection than the sulfa drugs prevalent up to that time.

Computers. Primitive mechanical versions were developed for artillery applications as early as the Pelopponessian Wars.

A few dozen countries including the Unitd States, Poland, France and Germany who now determine their own destinies rather than having them dictated to them.

It's two in the morning or I could come up with a whole lot more examples.

Goesingthall

The Blood Bank is an American invention created during the second world war from the 'Blood for Britian' campaign. Also there are many plasma products which were created as a direct result of the conflict. Then there's Florence Nightingale's school of nursing thought, not so much an invention I guess. Medicine owes a lot to war, it provides many experiment subjects and case studies.

1916 Francis Rous and J.R. Turner introduce a citrate-glucose solution that permits storage of blood for several days after collection. Allowing for blood to be stored in containers for later transfusion aids the transition from the vein-to-vein method to direct transfusion. This discovery also allows for the establishment of the first blood depot by the British during World War I. Oswald Robertson is credited as the creator of the blood depots.

1932 The first blood bank is established in a Leningrad hospital.

... but I'm just guessing.

submarines
oxygen scrubbers
sonar
nuclear fission
night vision goggles
silencers?
DDT (though not used now)
the internet

although it's not really an invention per se: seatbelt laws (pushed for after the USAF learned that more of its pilots were killed in car crashes than in training accidents each year)

Just a few hunches on my part...

EDIT: Evidently some are confirmed by Goesingthall, above. I guess I should have typed faster.

I keep trying to find the history of plasma on google, but all I get are plasma screen articles. Do you know who is credited with developing plasma products during the war?

In 1940 Dr Alexis Carrel traveled from Europe to the US to convey the urgent need for blood products because of WWII. The products were created mostly by the American Red Cross and Blood Bank Doctors which was created by Dr Charles Drew. RED GOLD: THE EPIC STORY OF BLOOD is an excellent book/PBS miniseries that glazes over the topic. You can find some information about it here (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/basics/)

Marconi? Radio technology?

I just did the I/O Psych component of my degree, and lots of testing frameworks were developed because of WW2...

The P-38 can opener.

It works better than most can openers.

See it here at: http://www.georgia-outfitters.com/page52.shtml

The pencil and the pen were wartime inventions, the Napoleonic War that is. Other wartime inventions were MRE's! Meals rejected by everyone. The motorway system is an invention of the second world war, and Adolf Hitler in particular

The process of preserving food by glass-jar "canning" (bottling). IIRC developed in France during the Napoleonic era to help resolve food-train/supply issues. The first food preserved this way (again, IIRC) was peas in a champagine bottle.

Tinned food. World war one saw the first mass-use of this idea, as previously everything had to be dried, salted, or kept in jars full of water/oil.

Tinned food. World war one saw the first mass-use of this idea, as previously everything had to be dried, salted, or kept in jars full of water/oil.
Heh. See above. gotta love simul-posts.

Heh. See above. gotta love simul-posts.

Weird. I only saw yours after I posted my own...

Weird. I only saw yours after I posted my own...You are correct on Tinning though... and "canning" in a "Mason Jar" was, I believe, a mostly USian habit...

The jet engine?

Nope. It got invented (and the first one built and run) pre-war by a brit but because the government scientists were up their own asses Germany got the first one flying in 1940 I believe.

You are correct on Tinning though... and "canning" in a "Mason Jar" was, I believe, a mostly USian habit...

If you ever get tired of using the term USian to describe people from the U.S. try Gringo, it works better in conversation. :D

The Cigarette!

The use of tobacco in cigarette form is a relatively recent invention, becoming increasingly popular after the Crimean War. Cigarettes were largely unknown in the English-speaking world before the Crimean War, when British soldiers began emulating their Ottoman Turkish comrades, who resorted to rolling their tobacco with newsprint. This was helped by the development of certain types of tobaccos that are suitable for cigarette use. During World War I and World War II, cigarettes were rationed to soldiers.

(Wikipedia article on cigarette abridged.)

You are correct on Tinning though... and "canning" in a "Mason Jar" was, I believe, a mostly USian habit...

I saw a prog on that once...It's not really like the French used that method much though. I suppose it's expensive to supply whole armies like they would have needed to, but they got the guerillas in Spain and Portugal when they tried it over there...

Nope. It got invented (and the first one built and run) pre-war by a brit but because the government scientists were up their own asses Germany got the first one flying in 1940 I believe.
Nope! Although the gas turbine was not an idea developed in the 1930s, and the patent for a stationary turbine was granted to John Barber in England in 1791, the He 178 was the world's first jetplane to fly on August 27, 1939 from Marienehe aerodrome.

Which is Spanish for "cigarette"

I bet there are hundreds of inventions and especially materials that were developed during wars and then proved their worth in civic life. Synthetic rubber for example. Or alternative fuels. Welding techniques. Just to name a few without really thinking of a specific object.
(And - despite my efforts years ago - no hablo Espanol...)

The idea of a bomb. Circa very very early history!

Can anybody think of a technology/ invention that was invented specifically as a result of war that is currently being used today in a non military capacity?

Uhm - bombs are rarely used in a non military capacity. Explosives is more like it.

Uhm - bombs are rarely used in a non military capacity. Explosives is more like it.
Nobel's invention of nitrogen-based high explosives (nitroglycerine/dynamite) was, in part, "to make war so terrible that no one would want to do it again" (or some similar sentiment).

Then I go out and blast tree-trunks with the result.

The yo yo!
And boomerangs.

the internet

Whoever said the submarine, uh, what??!?!

Whoever said the submarine, uh, what??!?!

I was actually under the impression that submarines were invented during WW1 then developed during WW2.

It was invented during the american revolution, wasn't it?

shame on you that i as a dutchmen have to tell you that. :p

It was invented during the american revolution, wasn't it?

shame on you that i as a dutchmen have to tell you that. :p

1. If it was invented during the War for Independence, do you know who invented it and for what purpose?

2. Are you making assumptions about by nationality?

1. If it was invented during the War for Independence, do you know who invented it and for what purpose?

2. Are you making assumptions about by nationality?

1: do not know his name, but it was designed for sinking ships (from the North i think)

2: i assume every-one here is American until he/she says otherwise (sorry if i offended some-one, didn't mean to)

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine


"The first submersible for which there is reliable information that it was really built, is the one constructed in 1620 by Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I. It was propelled by means of oars. The precise nature of the type is a matter of some controversy, some claiming it was merely a bell towed by a boat. There were two improved types, tested below the surface of the Thames between 1620 and 1624."

didn't know that :eek: :D



"The first military submarine
The first military submarine was the Turtle, a hand-powered spherical contraption designed by the American David Bushnell that was designed to accommodate a single man. It was the first verified submarine, capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion. During the American Revolutionary War, Turtle attempted and failed to sink a British warship, HMS Eagle in New York harbor on September 7, 1776."

1: do not know his name, but it was designed for sinking ships (from the North i think)

2: i assume every-one here is American until he/she says otherwise (sorry if i offended some-one, didn't mean to)

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine


"The first submersible for which there is reliable information that it was really built, is the one constructed in 1620 by Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I. It was propelled by means of oars. The precise nature of the type is a matter of some controversy, some claiming it was merely a bell towed by a boat. There were two improved types, tested below the surface of the Thames between 1620 and 1624."

didn't know that :eek: :D



"The first military submarine
The first military submarine was the Turtle, a hand-powered spherical contraption designed by the American David Bushnell that was designed to accommodate a single man. It was the first verified submarine, capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion. During the American Revolutionary War, Turtle attempted and failed to sink a British warship, HMS Eagle in New York harbor on September 7, 1776."

Ay que bueno, muchas gracias!

but still, weres the non-military use?

but still, weres the non-military use?
deep sea research

GPS, now almost standard in cars, was used by the US in the Cold War for accuracy in missile strikes. In the 1980's you could pick which corner of the Kremlin you wanted to aim for, not that it would matter.

Ohh, and has anyone said the internet? The result of the Cold War I think created by the military then given to universities.

Nope, sorry, wasn't a wartime invention - check this webpage

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/Achievements/WorldWideWeb/WWW-en.html

deep sea research

Oh, ok