Inventions that have arisen thanks to wars and upheavals. Today we will talk about time, materials and "light buttons"
Translate of time
People have been thinking about the fact that time can be translated for a long time. In peasant villages, they always adjusted to daylight hours. We got up early and went to bed early in order to do all the important things before dark. You can't walk around with a splinter, and candles were either expensive or very expensive until the middle of the 19th century.
First, lamps appeared, then greasy smoking candles, then stearic and paraffinic ones. But even after the spread of candle factories, candles were very expensive for ordinary people. Lifting chandeliers with hundreds of candlesticks could afford even the rich. That is why many mirrors began to be installed in the ballrooms - they reflected light, which spared the wallets of the nobles.
By the way, when I saw balls in films (in a large beautiful hall decorated with a thousand candles), I always wondered - how safe is it? Can the candle float, fall? But couples dance and dance, and never once is there any excess.
It turned out that everything in life was different. The candles swam, the reservoirs for collecting wax did not always help - the candles dripped, fell, sometimes even fell on high wigs and the dancers had to be rescued.
At the same time, the proverb "the game is not worth the candle" was born - originally it meant a card game. And if it was not interesting, not profitable, then candles were more expensive than winning - then the game was not worth the money spent on it.
In 1784, the American politician Benjamin Franklin, in his message to the Paris Journal, put forward the idea of dividing time into winter and summer:
"Since people do not go to bed at sunset, the candles have to be wasted," the politician wrote. "But in the morning the sunlight is wasted, because people wake up later than the sun rises."
Franklin was not alone in advocating the transition. A hundred years later, they talked about it both in New Zealand and in Britain. But the matter did not go further than talk.
The official transition to daylight saving time happened only in 1916, on May 21. The United Kingdom adopted the new procedure, and then, assessing the economic advantages of such a decision, other European countries came to the transition to daylight saving time.
Two years later, on March 19, 1918, a decision was made on "time zones", and daylight saving time was left until the end of the First World War.
When the economic situation improved, daylight saving time was canceled, but the idea remained - and, as history has shown, it was applied more than once.
Tarpaulin and crises
Tarpaulin as a material came into widespread use during the First World War. The soldiers sitting in the damp trenches had to flee from the bad weather. Chemists experimented for a long time and came up with the idea that if you saturate a dense canvas with a special substance that would not let moisture through and would not burn, then this would solve many problems. And such a composition was found. Back in 1887, a German Jew, Levi Strauss, was quite successful in selling tarpaulins for gold diggers' tents. He also invented for them durable canvas pants - Levi's jeans.
So, the tarp entered the life of the soldier. They began to replace the skin: cheaper, more practical, but there was one thing - the tarpaulin was very heavy and "did not breathe." However, for a long time, it was used to make belt and gun belts, boots and cloaks.
By the way, before the canvas was impregnated, qualities similar to those of the tarpaulin were also discovered in hemp. These were the oldest fibers found on earth. Until three thousand years ago, hemp was used in China for the production of ropes.
When it comes to tarpaulin, the tarpaulin immediately pops up. And it is quite justified. Because the author of both materials in Russia is considered the inventor, Major General Mikhail Pomortsev. He became interested in the production of durable fabric for the army at the beginning of the 20th century. He worked only with domestic materials - local substitutes for rubber. And in 1904 he found his tarp. However, he went further - he began to look for the composition of the impregnation, which would give the fabrics the properties of leather. And I found my own recipe: egg yolk, rosin and paraffin wax. The fabric impregnated with such an emulsion did not allow water to pass through, but “breathed”. The author called the new material a tarpaulin, which was the name of a coarse woolen fabric made of sheep wool (from the name of the town Kersey in England, where this breed of sheep was bred).
The material created by Pomortsev was appreciated. The fabric was tested during the Russo-Japanese War - bags, covers, and ammunition were sewn from it. And then she took several awards at international exhibitions.
He proposed to sew boots from this fabric during the First World War. But then it failed. Manufacturers of leather shoes were afraid to be left without a large state order, so they threw all their efforts to delay the introduction of tarpaulin boots into the army. In 1916, Mikhail Mikhailovich Pomortsev died. The promotion of tarpaulin boots has stalled.
They returned to them only during the Great Patriotic War. Then the tarpaulin was invented again. Scientists Byzov and Lebedev. But both of them quickly passed away and the scientists Khomutov and Plotnikov took on the issue of the tarpaulin. They took into account both the Pomortsev method and the latest developments. And finally, the tarpaulin went into production. But the material was not finalized - the tarpaulin cracked, could not withstand the loads. And it was possible to correct the shortcomings only by the beginning of the war - an order was received from above.
Ivan Plotnikov was appointed chief engineer of the Kozhimit plant, the brightest heads were assembled and a year later they received a new tarpaulin - lightweight, durable and comfortable. The one that everyone remembers who happened to serve in the Soviet army.
The inventors received the 2nd degree Stalin Prize. So the USSR, and then Russia, became the world leader in the production of tarpaulin shoes.
By the way, there is another version of the name. Kirza is Cyrus (ovsky) for (water). It was here that the mass production of new fabrics was established during the Great Patriotic War.
Lightning
The zipper also appeared during the First World War. Before that, the military used only buttons.
Their history goes back millennia. The earliest finds date back to the 3rd millennium BC. In the days of Ancient Greece, buttons were not only an auxiliary item, but also an ornament, and sometimes a work of art and a luxury item.
In Russia, the button became popular under Ivan the Terrible. Buttons performed rather a decorative function and spoke of the well-being of the owner of the dress - clasps made of silver, gold or ivory spoke of a high position in society. Some specimens were enameled, some were glazed. The sizes reached a hen's egg. They were left as a legacy and taken into account as an important component in the dowry.
But nevertheless, quickly buttoning the coat with buttons was not easy. And, starting in the mid-19th century, tailors began to look for alternative fasteners. One of them was the invention of the American Gideon Sundbeck.
It happened thanks to his marriage to the daughter of the manufacturer Aronsson, who in 1893 tried to introduce a similar boot fastener into circulation - two rows of hooks and cells held the frame tightly. This clasp was invented by his partner Whitcomb Judson. But Aronsson could not "spin" the product. His son-in-law picked up the idea and in 1913 perfected it - he removed the hooks and left only the fastening elements. And four years later, he modified the zipper to its current state.
And since 1918, the US military began to wear Gideon Sundbeck's zipper. And after the First World War, these inventions became firmly established in everyday life.
Any war is a driving force for accelerating technological progress. At the same time, not all inventions made during military operations are aimed at killing people.
Let's remember what the most famous inventions were made during the Second World War.
Jeep (1940)
During World War II, the US Army, in need of a fast and light all-terrain vehicle, urged American manufacturers to create a working prototype of such a machine. Willys was the first to respond. The very name "Jeep" appeared as a nickname for light multipurpose military vehicles "Willys" and similar cars "Ford GPW" (Ford). In the post-war years, it became a trademark of new generations of civil and army vehicles of the Willis company from Toledo, officially registered on June 30, 1950.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that America could not have won World War II without the Willys Jeeps. During World War II, SUVs became one of the most common military vehicles in the Allied armies, with a total circulation of 620,000.
In the USSR in 1941-1945, the world's first all-wheel drive sedan GAZ-61-73 with a comfortable closed body from "Emka" was produced in a limited series, and since the summer of 1941 - the first Soviet off-road vehicle GAZ-64, nicknamed by the front-line soldiers "Ivan-Willis" for similarity to the original Willys MA of 1941, supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War.
Digital electronic computer (1942)
The world's first digital electronic computer was built by Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942. They introduced a number of innovations in computing, including a binary arithmetic system, parallel information processing, memory sharing, and more. The fundamental feature of the machine was the execution of a certain changeable set of instructions (programs) without the need for physical reconfiguration. And although the inventors did not manage to complete the development (Atanasov went into the active army), their machine had a great influence on John Mauchly, who created the ENIAC computer two years later.
And already at the beginning of 1943, the first American computer Mark I, designed to perform complex ballistic calculations of the American Navy, passed successful tests. At the end of the same year, the British special-purpose computer Colossus was put into operation. The machine was working on deciphering the secret codes of Nazi Germany. In 1944, the German Konrad Zuse developed the even faster Z4 computer, as well as the first high-level programming language, Planckalkühl.
Scuba (1943)
The first surface air regulator was patented back in 1866 by Benoit Rouqueirole, a French mining engineer who in 1860 invented a compressed air leakage regulator for use in polluted mines. Later, Auguste Deneiruz adapted it for automatic air supply under water. In 1878, Henry Fluss invented the first successful closed-circuit breathing apparatus using pure oxygen. However, divers soon had problems with the fact that pure oxygen, inhaled under pressure, becomes toxic at a depth of more than 20 meters and its inhalation time must be limited.
In the 1910s, the oxygen supply regulator was improved and cylinders were made that could withstand gas pressure up to 200 kgf / cc. This allowed the autonomous apparatus with a closed circuit Fluss to become a standard rescue equipment for the British submarine fleet. Later, a French naval officer, Captain II Rank Le Prieur, succeeded in constructing a breathing apparatus with a high-strength compressed air cylinder. Georges Comintes improved the Le Prieur apparatus by replacing one compressed air cylinder with two.
Closed-circuit breathing apparatus were very popular by all the belligerents. However, scuba gear in its modern form (with an open breathing circuit in compressed air) was invented only in 1943 by two Frenchmen - naval officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan. Working in the difficult conditions of German-occupied France, they invented the first safe and effective apparatus for breathing underwater, called scuba diving, which Cousteau later successfully used to dive to a depth of 60 meters without any harmful consequences.
One of the few inventions that have nothing to do with war. The name of the spring toy comes from the Swede. slinky - mysterious, sleek and twisty. Created in 1943 in the USA by Richard James from black metal, the toy is also known as Andamania.
It is believed that it can be thrown from hand to hand and thereby calm the nerves. She also knows how to "walk" down the stairs. The real Slinky spring is still produced only in the USA and is only available in a round shape and in one color. Plastic Slinks were made of colored plastic, and metal ones were painted using a special technology. In the 90s, many fakes from Southeast Asia appeared in the form of hearts, stars and butterflies, often painted in rainbow colors. The round shape of the original Slinky, both metal and plastic, is due to the fact that springs of a different shape cannot “walk” exactly on the stairs, so it is not so interesting to play with them.
LSD (1943)
Another invention not related to war. LSD-25 was first obtained in 1938 by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, but the psychotropic properties of this compound were discovered by chance, in 1943. On April 19, 1943, Dr. Albert Hofmann was deliberately the first human to take LSD. Three days earlier, he accidentally, not yet knowing about the action of diethylamide, absorbed some of the substance with his fingertips. On this day, he deliberately took 250 mcg of the substance. After a while, the symptoms that he had already felt before began to appear - dizziness and anxiety. Soon the effect became so strong that Albert could no longer form coherent sentences and, under the supervision of his assistant, notified of the experiment, set off on a bicycle home. During the trip, he experienced the effects of LSD, thereby making this day the date of the world's first psychedelic experience with LSD. On April 22, he wrote about his experiment and experience, and later placed this note in his book LSD - My Problem Child.
In the 1960s, LSD research was actively pursued. Experiments carried out by the CIA (USA) in the framework of the MK Ultra program turned out to be devoted to publicity. The effects of LSD have also been studied by a number of scientists at universities in the United States and other countries. The most famous are the studies of Stanislav Grof and Timothy Leary. The inventor himself, who called LSD "medicine for the soul," died in 2008 at the age of 102.
Turboprop engine (1945)
The first turboprop engine was developed back in the mid-30s by a professor at the Technical University in Berlin A.S. Gebreberg Wagner. As head of the aircraft division at the Junkers Flugzeugwerke, he hoped to be able to give the combat aircraft the highest possible performance.
And only the 18th sample of the Gloster Meteor jet fighter, on which Rolls-Royce RB.50 Trent turboprop engines were installed instead of the standard turbojets, was able to take off on September 20, 1945.
Nuclear Weapons (1945)
The first person to patent a nuclear bomb was Leo Szilard in 1934. But the events of World War II pushed scientists to start developing nuclear weapons in practice. For this purpose, in the United States, on September 17, 1943, the so-called Manhattan Project was created, to which many prominent physicists were attracted, including refugees from Europe.
By the summer of 1945, the Americans managed to build 3 atomic bombs, 2 of which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the third was tested shortly before that. On July 16, 1945, the world's first atomic bomb test, called Trinity (Trinity), was carried out in New Mexico. And on August 6, 1945, the American bomber B-29 "Enola Gay" dropped the uranium atomic bomb "Kid" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The power of the explosion was, according to various estimates, from 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT. On August 9, 1945, the plutonium atomic bomb "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Its power was significantly higher and amounted to 15-22 kilotons, which was associated with a more advanced bomb design.
From here
Please
French trench armor against bullets and shrapnel. 1915
The Sappenpanzer appeared on the Western Front in 1916. In June 1917, having captured several German body armor, the Allies conducted research. According to these documents, German body armor can stop a rifle bullet at a distance of 500 meters, but its main purpose is against shrapnel and shrapnel. The vest can be hung both on the back and on the chest. The first samples collected were found to be less heavy than the later ones, with an initial thickness of 2.3 mm. Material - an alloy of steel with silicon and nickel.
Such a mask was worn by the commander and driver of the British Mark I to protect his face from shrapnel.
Barricade.
German soldiers are trying on the captured Russian "mobile barricade".
Infantryman's mobile shield (France).
Experimental Heavy Helmets. USA, 1918.
USA. Protection for bomber pilots. Armored troopers.
Various options for armored shields for police officers from Detroit.
Austrian trench shield that could be worn as a bib.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" from Japan.
Armor shield for orderlies.
Individual armor protection with the uncomplicated name "Turtle". As far as I understand, this thing had no "floor" and the fighter moved it himself.
MacAdam's Shield Shovel, Canada, 1916. Assumed for dual use, both as a shovel and as a rifle shield. It was ordered by the Canadian government in a series of 22,000 pieces. As a result, the device was inconvenient like a shovel, inconvenient due to the too low location of the loophole like a rifle shield, and was pierced through by rifle bullets. After the war, melted down like scrap metal
I could not pass by such a wonderful carriage (though already post-war). Great Britain, 1938
And finally, "an armored cubicle of a public toilet - a pepelats". Armored observation post. United Kingdom.
It is not enough to sit behind a shield. How to "pick out" the enemy from behind the shield? And then “the need (the soldiers) are cunning for inventions ... Quite exotic means were used.
French bomb throwing machine. Medieval technology is in demand again.
Well, absolutely ... a slingshot!
But they had to be moved somehow. It was here that the engineering and technical genius and production facilities came into operation again.
An urgent and rather stupid alteration of any self-propelled mechanism sometimes gave rise to amazing creatures.
On April 24, 1916, an anti-government uprising broke out in Dublin (Easter Rising) and the British needed at least some armored vehicles to move troops along the bombarded streets.
On April 26, in just 10 hours, the specialists of the 3rd reserve cavalry regiment, using the equipment of the Southern Railway workshops in Inchikor, were able to assemble an armored car from an ordinary commercial 3-ton Daimler cargo chassis and ... a steam boiler. Both the chassis and the boiler were delivered from the Guinness brewery
You can write a separate article about armored railcars, so I will only limit myself to one photo for a general presentation.
And this is an example of the banal hanging of steel shields on the side of a truck for military purposes.
Danish “armored car” based on the Gideon 2 T 1917 truck with plywood armor (!).
Another French craft (in this case in the service of Belgium) is the Peugeot armored car. Again, without the protection of the driver, engine and even the rest of the crew in front.
And how do you like this "aerotachan" from 1915?
Or such ...
1915 Sizaire-Berwick "Wind Wagon". Death to the enemy (from diarrhea), the infantry will be blown away.
Later, after WW1, the idea of an aero-carriage did not die out, but was developed and in demand (especially in the snowy expanses of the north of the USSR).
The snowmobile had a frameless, closed body made of wood, the front of which was protected by a sheet of bulletproof armor. In the front of the hull there was a control compartment in which the driver was located. To monitor the road in the front panel there was a viewing slot with a glass block from the BA-20 armored car. Behind the control compartment there was a fighting compartment, in which a 7.62-mm DT tank machine gun was mounted on a turret, equipped with a light shield cover. The machine gun was fired by the commander of the snowmobile. The horizontal angle of fire was 300 °, vertical - from –14 to 40 °. Machine gun ammunition consisted of 1000 rounds.
By August 1915, two officers of the Austro-Hungarian army - Hauptmann engineer Romanik and Oberleutenant Fellner in Budapest designed such a glamorous armored car, presumably based on a Mercedes car with a 95 horsepower engine. It was named after the first letters of the names of the creators of Romfell. Armor 6 mm. It was armed with one machine gun Schwarzlose M07 / 12 8 mm (3,000 rounds of ammunition) in the turret, which could, in principle, be used for air targets. The car was radioed with a Morse code telegraph from Siemens & Halske. Vehicle speed up to 26 km / h. Weight 3 tons, length 5.67 m, width 1.8 m, height 2.48 m. Crew 2 people.
And Mironov liked this monster so much that I will not deny myself the pleasure of showing it again. In June 1915, production of the Marienwagen began at the Daimler plant in Berlin-Marienfelde. This tractor was produced in several versions: semi-tracked, fully tracked, although their base was a 4-ton Daimler tractor.
To break through the fields, entangled with barbed wire, they invented just such a hay wire mower.
On June 30, 1915, another prototype was assembled in the courtyard of the London Wormwood Scrubs prison by members of the 20th Squadron of the Royal Navy Aviation School. The chassis of the American Killen-Straight tractor with wooden tracks in the tracks was taken as a basis.
In July, an armored hull from the Delano-Belleville armored car was installed on it in an experimental manner, then a hull from Austin and a turret from Lanchester.
The FROT-TURMEL-LAFFLY tank, a wheeled tank built on the chassis of a Laffly road roller. It is protected by 7 mm armor, weighs about 4 tons, and is armed with two 8 mm machine guns and mitrailleza of unknown type and caliber. By the way, in the photo the armament is much stronger than the one stated - apparently the “holes for the gun” were cut with a margin.
The exotic shape of the hull is due to the fact that the idea of the designer (that of the city of Froth), the car was intended to attack the wire barriers, which the car had to crush with its hull - after all, monstrous wire barriers, along with machine guns, were one of the main problems for the infantry.
The French had a brilliant idea - to use small-caliber cannons firing grappling hooks to overcome enemy wire obstacles. In the photo, the calculations of such guns.
Well, and as soon as they did not mock motorcycles, trying to adapt them to military operations ...
Motorcycle woman on a Motosacoche trailer.
Another one.
Field ambulance.
Fuel delivery.
A three-wheeled armored motorcycle designed for reconnaissance missions, especially for narrow roads.
More entertaining than this - only "Grillo track boat"! Just chasing alligators on the swampy shores of the Adriatic, shooting torpedoes ... In fact, who participated in sabotage operations, was shot while trying to sink the battleship "Viribus Unitis". Due to a silent electric motor, he made his way to the port at night and, using tracks, climbed over the fencing booms. But in the port he was noticed by guards and flooded.
Their displacement was 10 tons, armament - four 450-mm torpedoes.
But to overcome water obstacles individually, other means have been developed. For example, such as:
Combat water skiing.
Combat catamaran.
Battle stilts
But this is already R2D2. Self-propelled firing point on electric traction. Behind her, a "tail" -cable was dragged across the entire battlefield.
The Second World War gave mankind a number of inventions, including those not related to the military industry. Scientific and technological progress in the XX century was due to the efforts of physicists, doctors and engineers who worked for the good of the front. Futurist presents eight inventions of war that we still use today.
Space program
The German "weapon of retaliation" (Vergeltungswaffe), according to some estimates, claimed the lives of more than 2.5 thousand people. During its production, 8 times more died. Nevertheless, this sinister ambitious program to create ballistic missiles, guided aerial bombs and rocket planes to bombard English cities has gifted humanity with orbital flights, landing on the moon and space telescopes. Soviet and American missile programs began with launches of captured and later modified V-2 missiles.
The V-2, hastily designed by Wernher von Braun, was a rather crude ballistic missile. 20% of the collected specimens were discarded, half of the missiles launched exploded, and the deviation from the target was about 10 km. In fact, it was intended not to destroy, but to intimidate civilians. However, the main advantage of this single-stage rocket was liquid fuel and inertial navigation. Fuel was supplied to the combustion chamber using two centrifugal pumps driven by a turbine powered by steam and gas. A fuel based on water and ethanol was mixed with liquid oxygen and created the necessary thrust. This mixture continued to be used after the war: the American Redstone PGM-11 rocket used the same fuel configuration and remained in service until 1964. Australia's first WRESAT satellite went into space in 1967 on one of these rockets. Most of the missile's flight was uncontrollable, but its trajectory was corrected by a system of two gyroscopes.
The V-2 became the model for the Soviet P-series ballistic missiles. On the basis of the legendary "seven" ("R-7"), the Vostok launch vehicle was created, which sent Yuri Gagarin into space. The American Hermes program, originally intended to create its own ballistic missiles, was later reoriented to modernize the V-2. Wernher von Braun, captured by American soldiers, is considered the "father" of the US space program. Under his leadership, the first American satellite, the Explorer, was launched. And in 1961, von Braun headed the lunar program.
The first programmable computer
The British radio interception service was faced with the most complex German ciphers. The Enigma code, which was used in the field, was well studied during the war. However, the cipher that was created by the Lorenz cipher machine remained a mystery to cryptologists. Deciphering the Lorenz code was a strategically important task, since with its help the high German command encoded messages. British cryptologists called the German encrypted messages "fish", but these messages were given an individual nickname - "Tuna".
Thanks to the error of the German ransomware, who sent two messages slightly different from each other, it was possible to find out that the Lorenz machine is a typical encryption device consisting of rotating wheels. But it has twice as many wheels as in the Enigma - there were 10 of them. The encryption key was determined by the initial position of the wheels. Five wheels spun regularly and five irregularly. Two additional, motorized wheels controlled the irregular rotation.
To encrypt the data, Lorenz's machine used the XOR command. It generated five pairs of pseudo-random bits (1 or 0) and output 1 if only one of the characters was 1, otherwise the result is 0. So 1 XOR 0 = 1, but 1 XOR 1 = 0. Each character in the machine Lorenz was compiled with pseudo-random bits, for example: 10010 XOR 11001 = 01011. The most important thing about this algorithm is that the machine actually encrypted the data twice.
To decipher the Lorenz code, British engineer Tommy Flowers and his team created the Colossus electronic programmable computer ("Colossus"). The computer consisted of 1,500 vacuum tubes, making it the largest computer of the time. The Colossus Mark II retrofit of 2500 lamps is considered the first programmable computer in computer history.
Before the creation of Colossus, it took several weeks to decrypt messages, but now the result becomes known within a few hours. The vehicle was fully operational by the time it landed in Normandy in 1944. Thanks to the Colossus, in particular, it became clear that the Allies had successfully misinformed the German forces. After the war, Churchill ordered the destruction of all computers, but in 1994 engineers managed to restore a working version of the Colossus Mark II from photographs. Thanks to this work, it became known that a half-century computer operates at about the same speed as a laptop with a Pentium 2 processor.
Turbojet aircraft
Although Sir Frank Whittle received a patent for a turbojet engine as early as 1930, the British government was not particularly interested in the development and progress was slow. The Third Reich really pushed this technology forward and the Messerschmitt Me.262 became the first turbojet fighter. The German Arado Ar 234 was the first jet bomber and the last Nazi aircraft to fly over England in April 1945. By the end of the war, the Heinkel He 162 ("Sparrow") single-engine jet fighter was produced, which was designed in the shortest possible time - in 90 days.
Nuclear weapon
The potential of nuclear energy has been known for a long time. But it was during the Second World War that the opportunity arose to test them in practice. The first atomic bomb was created in the United States. In 1941, Enrico Fermi completed the theory of a nuclear chain reaction, and two years later, under the leadership of physicist Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project was launched. Two bombs created during the project were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 244,000 people were killed in the actual bombing. The problem of the proliferation of deadly nuclear weapons has generated a lot of controversy. However, without this discovery, there would be no nuclear power.
Radio navigation
The first technology of radar (Radio Detection and Ranging) was developed in the 1930s by Robert Watson Watt and Arnold Wilkins. It made it possible to prevent the threat of aerial bombardment. Historians say the Battle of Britain's outcome may have been predetermined by the British reliance on radar defenses and Germany's decision to focus on bombing cities. As a result, Britain was able to make out the German bombers while they were up to 100 miles away and concentrate their forces.
Penicillin
Howard Flory (left) observes a wounded soldier receiving penicillin treatment at the American Military Hospital in New York in 1944.
Penicillin was isolated back in 1928 by Alexander Fleming thanks to the confusion in his laboratory. The scientist discovered that a colony of molds has grown in one of the Petri dishes with bacteria. Bacterial colonies around the molds have become transparent due to cell destruction. Fleming was able to isolate a substance that destroyed cells. A study on the bactericidal properties of penicillin was published in 1929, but attempts to obtain a pure antibiotic and improve its quality were unsuccessful. Only 10 years later, Australian scientist Howard Flory took the lead in medical penicillin research. Together with a small group of scientists, which included Ernst Boris Chain, they developed a complex drug by 1941, which was successfully tested. For this, the researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Alexander Fleming.
Scuba
The first scuba gear was invented back in 1866, it was used in mines where the air was polluted. In 1878, a device for prolonged stay under water with a closed breathing circuit appeared. Carbon dioxide is removed from the air exhaled by the diver and, as required, pure oxygen is added from the container. In those days, it was not known that pure oxygen becomes toxic under pressure. Despite the danger, in the Second World War, scuba gear with a closed breathing system was the standard rescue equipment for the submarine fleet. However, naval officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan, who worked in German-occupied France, in 1943 were able to create an apparatus with an open breathing circuit, where exhalation is carried out directly into the water. This type of scuba gear was much safer.
Slinky
One of the most popular and durable toys in the world was invented by accident during World War II by the American naval engineer Richard James in 1943. He was trying to figure out how springs could be used to store important and expensive equipment at sea. An engineer accidentally dropped one of the springs and noted its interesting move. After the war, the toy became extremely popular: by the end of the 20th century, 250 million copies were sold.
I was prompted to create this post by the recent post "11 inventions that we owe to wars." After reading it, I thought: "Is there really not a single Russian military invention?" I don’t understand, the aggressor country, as it is now customary to say in the West, which gave the world incandescent lamps, radio, electric telegraph, internal combustion engine, etc., has not invented anything in the military sphere? I was interested in this question and I started digging, and this is what I dug up:
Russian Fedorov assault rifle
The world's first automatic rifle and machine gun was invented by a citizen of the Russian Empire, Lieutenant General of the Engineering and Technical Service V.G. Fedorov. Back in 1905, he proposed a project for converting a Mosin system magazine rifle, model 1891, into an automatic one. And in 1906 he began to develop a fundamentally new automatic rifle. A year before the First World War, Fedorov made two prototypes. In terms of combat characteristics, his invention turned out to be an intermediate link between a light machine gun and an automatic rifle. They fired both bursts and single shots. Therefore, it received the name "machine". For the first time in the world, one of the companies of the 189th Izmail Infantry Regiment was armed with machine guns and automatic rifles of the Fedorov system. That she underwent special training at the officer shooting school of Oranienbaum and in December 1916 she was sent to the front. So, in Russia, the world's first military unit, armed with light automatic weapons, appeared.
Gobyato mortar mortar
Hereditary nobleman, St. George Cavalier and military design engineer L.N. Gobyato in the Russo-Japanese was the battery commander of the 4th East Siberian Rifle Artillery Brigade. When the need arose in the defense of Port Arthur to destroy the enemy's manpower and cover the Japanese firing points (hidden in trenches and ravines) with hinged fire from close range, Gobyato came up with a mortar-mortar right on the front line. I designed an over-caliber mine with a stabilizer literally from improvised means. The barrels of the 47 mm marine guns were mounted on wheeled carriages. When there was not enough of them, he simply adapted metal pipes on wooden decks. Instead of conventional shells, he used homemade pole mines, which were fired at an angle of 45 to 85 ° along a hinged trajectory, and could destroy closed targets inaccessible to rifle-machine-gun and artillery floor fire. Gobyato's invention saved thousands of Russian soldiers' lives and was quickly taken up by the military engineers of the Western powers.
Schilder's submarine
Tests of the world's first all-metal submarine designed by K. A. Schilder were carried out on August 29, 1834 in the upper reaches of the Neva. The boat was equipped with a harpoon with a mine installed on it, which was supposed to penetrate the armor of an enemy ship. Then the mine was detonated from a safe distance. In addition, movable missile units were installed on the vehicle. The submarine was propelled by four blades that were spun by four crew members. It was also equipped with a kind of periscope for observing objects on the surface of the water. During tests, the boat reached a speed of about 0.7 km / h. Nicholas I and his advisers approved the idea of further development of the machine.
Alexandrovsky self-propelled torpedo mine
I.F. Aleksandrovsky went down in history with the submarine project, but was forgotten as the creator of the first Russian self-propelled torpedo mine. In 1861, he completed the development of the submarine's blueprints and built it in 1866. And here is his "torpedo", made a year before by handicraft means, but showed already at the first tests the combat potential, by Admiral N.N. Crabbe was judged "premature." And officials from the naval department dumped a lot of money to the English breeder Whitehead for his torpedo, which, in terms of tactical characteristics, did not surpass ours. The idea of a torpedo came from Aleksandrovsky in the process of designing a boat. By analogy, he decided to create a "self-propelled torpedo that would operate on compressed air and be controlled at depth." These two positions, which have become Whitehead's "main secret", will be discovered by the Russian nugget a year before the British "father of the torpedo." But only after 2 years - in 1868 - he was allowed to build it with "his own funds with subsequent compensation." In the end, his "independent mine" will have a course of 10 knots, and Whitehead, bought by the Austrian government for 200 thousand guilders and the British for 15 thousand pounds sterling, only seven.
Mine trawl
The high efficiency of the use of mine weapons by the fleets of the belligerent states forced them to look for reliable means of countering mines. After numerous experiments, Lieutenant M.N. Beklemishev in 1881 invented a new means of dealing with mines - a hemp trawl. It was made from a thick hemp rope about 200 m long, on which cylindrical weights were put on. When the trawl was dragged along the ground by the ships, the cable captured the mine and towed it into shallow water, where it floated up and was destroyed.
Armored car Nakashidze
The first Russian armored car is traditionally considered to be an armored car, created in 1904 by Mikhail Nakashidze. This son of a Georgian prince, cavalry general Alexander Davidovich Nakashidze, served in one of the Siberian Cossack regiments. At the very beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, he decided to create an armored car based on the French car Charron 50CV. The car turned out to be so successful that the company Charron, Girardot et Voigt (Sharron, Girardot and Voigt), which produced this car, undertook to make such armored cars according to the Nakashidze project for the Russian and French armies.
The armored car embodied a number of engineering solutions that later became classic: full body armor, a periscope for safe observation of the battlefield, a circular rotation machine-gun turret, wheels with bullet-resistant rubber tires, and the ability to start the engine from the control compartment.
Gusmatic
A. Guss Petersburg chemist. On the basis of gelatinous glue and glycerin, he developed a special filler for tires of armored vehicles. Lightweight and resilient, after being poured into a tire, it hardened and became dry, finely porous. The tires processed in this way were bullet-resistant and were named gusmatics by the name of the inventor.
Kotelnikov's backpack parachute
The artillery officer Gleb Kotelnikov was an artistic person. And the very idea of constructing a compact parachute came to him in the theater. After the performance, in the dressing room, I noticed a tight bundle in the lady's hands, she waved it, and the tight roll suddenly turned into a huge scarf. And in 1911, almost a year after the tragic death of the Russian pilot Captain Lev Matsievich, whom Kotelnikov personally witnessed at the All-Russian festival of aeronautics, he came up with a fundamentally new free-action aviation knapsack parachute RK-1. But when he applied for registration, he was refused. The head of the Russian Air Force, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, feared that "at the slightest failure of the aircraft, the pilots would begin to abandon the expensive aircraft in the air." And only on March 20, 1912 - already in France - Kotelnikov received a patent for № 438 612. The first tests were carried out with a car. The satchel was secured at the back. When the car took off, the parachute dropped its speed so abruptly that the engine stalled. The second - with a balloon. An 80-kilogram dummy was jumping. The first human jump from a 60-meter height from a bridge across the Seine was made by a student of the St. Petersburg Conservatory Vladimir Ossovsky in Rouen on January 5, 1913. Initially, the silk dome and slings, divided into 2 groups and attached to the shoulder grips of the harness, were removed into a wooden (later aluminum) satchel. In 1923 it was upgraded to an envelope with honeycomb for lines. The Russian army accepted Kotelnikov's parachute well. In 1917 alone, 65 descents were made.
Zelinsky-Kummant filtering carbon gas mask
Less than a year after the start of the First World War - on April 22, 1915 - at 3.30 a.m. on the outskirts of the Belgian city of Ypres, the Germans used chemical weapons for the first time in history. 5 thousand soldiers of the Anglo-French coalition died on the spot. A month later, a gas attack on the outskirts of Warsaw claimed over a thousand Russian lives. And the whole world rushed to seek protection from a new type of weapon. Industrial air purifiers, like multi-layer gauze dressings soaked in sodium hyposulfite, were useless on the front lines. It did not become the final panacea, and designed in November of the same year by the engineer-technologist of the Triangle plant E.L. Kummantom rubber helmet with goggles. Partly helped to breathe and protected the head. But there was still no filter capable of stopping the action of toxic substances. Western scientists have targeted chemical scavengers that neutralize specific poisons. And only the Russian organic chemist N.D. Zelinsky began to look for something that would purify the air regardless of the chemical composition of the organic matter. I noticed that those soldiers who managed to squeeze their faces into the loose earth survived. By association, I came to a universal absorber - charcoal. The head of the sanitary-evacuation unit of the Russian army, Prince of Oldenburg, tried to introduce inactivated coal with soda lime, which hardened under the moisture of breathing. Zelinsky made a bet on the activated one. Stopped at birch and linden. I was looking for ways to increase its porosity and adsorption. And he achieved - 1 gram of activated carbon with developed capillarity had an absorbing surface of 15 sq. M. Filters for the Kummant mask were made from it. In 1916, their universal gas mask entered service with the Russian army and was highly praised by the allies.
Crawler
On March 12, 1837, the staff captain of the Russian army Dmitry Andreevich Zagryazhsky submitted a petition to the Ministry of Finance for a patent for a crew with a flat-link metal caterpillar. The protocol of the commission that considered the inventor's proposal states: “From the description and drawings of his invention presented by Zagryazhsky, it is clear that an iron chain is circled around each ordinary wheel on which the carriage rolls, pulled by hexagonal wheels in front of the ordinary one. The sides of the hexagonal wheels are equal to the links of the chain, these chains replace to some extent the railroad, presenting the wheel with a smooth and hard surface. " In October 1837, the patent was issued.
Well, by tradition, not quite a military topic ... Space rocket
The flight of a man into space ... It seemed like a pipe dream, the plot of a science fiction novel. However, the power of the human mind turned out to be more powerful than the force of gravity: Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky became the first in a galaxy of brilliant scientists who managed to overcome the seemingly unshakable laws of nature. He not only proved that the only device capable of making space flight is a rocket, but also developed a model of it, although during his lifetime he did not manage to observe the launch of the spacecraft.
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