---
title: "History of military technology"
chunk: 2/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_military_technology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:05.083851+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Even craft-based military technologies were not generally produced by military funding. Instead, craftsmen and inventors developed weapons and military tools independently and actively sought the interest of military patrons afterward.  Following the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, governments and military leaders did try to harness the methods of both science and engineering for more specific ends, but frequently without success. In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, French artillery officers were often trained as engineers, and military leaders from this mathematical tradition attempted to transform the process of weapons manufacture from a craft-based enterprise to an organized and standardized system based on engineering principles and interchangeable parts (pre-dating the work of Eli Whitney in the U.S.). During the Revolution, even natural scientists participated directly, attempting to create “weapons more powerful than any we possess” to aid the cause of the new French Republic, though there were no means for the revolutionary army to fund such work.  Each of these efforts, however, was ultimately unsuccessful in producing militarily useful results.  A slightly different outcome came from the longitude prize of the 18th century, offered by the British government for an accurate method of determining a ship's longitude at sea (essential for the safe navigation of the powerful British navy): intended to promote—and financially reward—a scientific solution, it was instead won by a scientific outsider, the clockmaker John Harrison.  However, the naval utility of astronomy did help increase the number of capable astronomers and focus research on developing more powerful and versatile instruments.
Through the 19th century, science and technology grew closer together, particularly through electrical and acoustic inventions and the corresponding mathematical theories.  The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a trend toward military mechanization, with the advent of repeating rifles with smokeless powder, long-range artillery, high explosives, machine guns, and mechanized transport along with telegraphic and later wireless battlefield communication. Still, independent inventors, scientists and engineers were largely responsible for these drastic changes in military technology (with the exception of the development of battleships, which could only have been created through organized large-scale effort).

== World War I and the interwar years ==

World War I marked the first large-scale mobilization of science for military purposes.  Prior to the war, the American military ran a few small laboratories as well as the Bureau of Standards, but independent inventors and industrial firms predominated.  Similarly in Europe, military-directed scientific research and development was minimal.  The powerful new technologies that led to trench warfare, however, reversed the traditional advantage of fast-moving offensive tactics; fortified positions supported by machine guns and artillery resulted in high attrition but strategic stalemate.  Militaries turned to scientists and engineers for even newer technologies, but the introduction of tanks and aircraft had only a marginal impact; the use of poison gas made a tremendous psychological impact, but decisively favored neither side.  The war ultimately turned on maintaining adequate supplies of materials, a problem also addressed by military-funded science—and, through the international chemical industry, closely related to the advent of chemical warfare.
The Germans introduced gas as a weapon in part because naval blockades limited their supply of nitrate for explosives, while the massive German dye industry could easily produce chlorine and organic chemicals in large amounts.  Industrial capacity was completely mobilized for war, and Fritz Haber and other industrial scientists were eager to contribute to the German cause; soon they were closely integrated into the military hierarchy as they tested the most effective ways of producing and delivering weaponized chemicals.  Though the initial impetus for gas warfare came from outside the military, further developments in chemical weapon technology might be considered military-funded, considering the blurring of lines between industry and nation in Germany.