5 Weapons That Changed the World
The weapon: The Guillotine
The technology: This killing machine made use of a wooden frame, a heavy, angled blade, and a little force called gravity to lop off heads during the French Revolution in the 1790s.
How it changed the world: As the Revolution progressed, citizens began to vocalize their complaints about perceived inequality in execution methods of the day. This was a new France! It wasn't fair that nobles got beheaded with a dignified sword and everyone else got tossed on the agonizing breaking wheel. Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin was tasked with finding a way to humanely separate people from their heads. Inspired by a similar beheading device from 13th century called the Halifax Gibbet, Guillotin's crew emerged with a sleek, indiscriminate machine that would come to represent the entire revolution. It was the first real effort to make capital punishment quick and painless (not to mention efficient), and after the revolutionaries ran out of people to kill, they finally got around to shoring up their democracy.
The weapon: Little Boy
The technology: The world's first nuclear bomb, lovingly named "Little Boy," was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In one instant, it killed an estimated 140,000 people, effectively ended WWII, and ushered in a new era of military strategy based on apocalyptic-style destruction. The bomb used a simple "gun method" to achieve the nuclear fission chain reaction: It worked by using conventional explosives to blast two pieces of uranium-235 into each other inside the bomb chamber, which would then go critical and commence bringing about death and destruction in a very good impression of 18,000 tons of TNT.
How it changed the world: If you've ever seen 'Dr. Strangelove,' you understand the combination of fear, military escalation, and sheer insanity that followed the development of the bomb. A single bomb dropped from a propeller-driven airplane gave way to thousands of thermonuclear warheads squirreled away around the globe in missile silos, jet bombers, and nuclear submarines during the greatest arms race of all time. By the end of the 1950s, the world had enough nuclear firepower to blow up half the solar system. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed when Little Boy's cousin Fat Man blew up Nagasaki and became the last nuke ever used in battle.
The weapon: Greek Fire
The technology: Super flammable liquid was squirted out of iron syringes, or slung in iron balls onto enemy troops, who then would have to deal with their sudden immolation (a fact that tended to decrease their fighting efficacy). Developed by the Byzantines in the 6th century, the exact recipe for Greek fire is unknown and probably varied. It's thought to be comprised of petroleum and sulfur, or saltpeter. Siege tactics were common in those days, as was naval combat, and a good way to stop a siege tower was to soak it in flames. Oh, and Greek Fire was lighter than water, meaning it could float on the open ocean and wreak havoc on the wooden ships of the day.
How it changed the world: The Chinese had already developed explosives, but Greek Fire brought about a new class of incendiary weapons that were capable of greater destruction with little effort. Did we mention that Turkish cavalry used to fill hollow eggs with the material and throw them like grenades?
The weapon: The Ferguson Rifle
The technology: It's safe to say that guns changed the world, but early, black-powder muskets required so much time standing around reloading that it was often simpler just to get the dirty work done with a bayonet. Likely frustrated by all the mucking about standing in open fields ramming powder down a gun barrel, British Major Patrick Ferguson designed a breech-loading rifle in 1770 that allowed the gun to be quickly loaded from the rear.
How it changed the world: Since the weapon was loaded from the back, it allowed for spiraled rifling in the barrel. Rifling dramatically increases range and accuracy due to the spin it imparts on the projectile -- this in turn allowed for longer range engagements and eventually made face to face line combat obsolete.
The weapon: The V2
The technology: The V2 ballistic missile grew out of early German rocket tests led by Wernher von Braun. The scientific endeavor was co-opted by the Nazi war machine in the 1930s, and the research project -- that made the V2 the first man-made object to reach outer space -- became one of the most terrifying weapons of all time. Engineering triumphs, from its complex inertial guidance system and liquid-fueled rocket engine, allowed the V2 to strike predetermined targets in England from launch sites across the English Channel, and the missile's extreme, supersonic speeds made it absolutely silent until after it had turned your street into a hellish, fiery crater.
How it changed the world: When a single, non-nuclear weapon is responsible for inspiring one of the greatest books of the 20th century (Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow'), you know it deserves a place on this list. As much a psychological weapon as a physical one, British fear of the V2 was disproportionately larger than the number of deaths from the bomb. That same fear was pervasive in the 1970s thanks to the V2's descendants: nuclear-armed ICBMs. Of course, history is a double edged sword -- the V2 research effectively began the space race. Most of the V2 engineers were snapped up at the end of WWII by the U.S. and the Soviet Union to run each country's nascent space programs.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gipionocheiyort said 2:31PM on 7-07-2009
Nice article. Being the weirdo that I am I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
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Shan said 2:52PM on 7-07-2009
Yup.. thoroughly enjoyed that too - great read!
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Firoz said 4:49PM on 7-07-2009
Great article. I was reminded of the classic movie "2001:A Space Odyssey"--its unforgettable opening scenes captured, in audiovisual terms, the essential point your article was trying to make. The irony is that mankind has always found a way to turn technology into a double-edged sword-- wreaking havoc on the one hand, and advancing human progress on the other. Some things never change.
BTW, You might add the stirrup, the chariot and the English longbow to your list. by 1000 BC, the stirrup had made speedy cavalry maneuvers possible; around 800 BC, the chariot changed the velocity with which battlefields moved; and the longbow ended the sway of the heavily armored warriors, as Henry V demonstrated at Agincourt in 1415.
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cherrick94 said 12:00AM on 1-26-2010
Stirup and Chariot, though important in changing the world aren't weapons bro, keyh word being weapon, though i thinkg just the bow would have been good, it was the firts weapon to use a machine to project something.
ajax2235 said 4:28PM on 7-07-2009
Those heavily armored elite warriors of Agincourt, otherwise called knights, did not entirely fade away-- banished from the battlefield, they turned to holding private jousts complete with rituals and quaint protocols, creating what we today call"chivalry". And so we make our atavistic childhoods continue in our lives-- not wishing to grow up. Some things never change-- the fault, as Shakespeare would say, is "not in our stars but in ourselves".
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aawindoze said 5:39PM on 7-07-2009
Dude that was like a major trip down memory lane!
RT
www.be-anonymous.tk
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Chad Mumm said 10:16PM on 7-07-2009
@Firoz
Thanks, I totally forgot about the stirrup! The longbow definitely crossed my mind, but I couldn't decide between the longbow or the crossbow and went with the Ferguson as my projectile weapon.
Chad Mumm
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Unknown said 12:31AM on 7-08-2009
Boys with powerful toys to make big noise that cost many lives.
The price of intimidation is steep, used for security or for war.
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colcam said 2:19PM on 7-14-2009
A very poorly thought out piece of writing. The way it jumps eras and randomly names "things" does not fit with a progression of technology or social structure, and to include a fixture for execution is strange, because it is not a weapon-- when was the last time someone mugged a little old lady by dragging her into an alley and whipping out a Guillotine to threaten her? To name Little Boy-- a single example of a device-- as if it were the class of devices, that is clearly poor thought and writing. "The Nuke" might be a weapon that changed the world, but the single nuke known as Little Boy did not magically make the change. Greek Fire did not really alter the world, it was a small part of battlefield technology, overly hyped by people who little about real battlefields, and the rifle existed long before the Ferguson-- and they were effective weapons, too. The Ferguson was an innovation, but one that was not revolutionary (pardon the pun) despite the time frame, and American riflemen took huge tolls on British troops with their old, muzzleloading rifles. The firearm, and perhaps even the subset of firearms known as the rifle, well that might be a "world changer," but the Ferguson rifle was not. The same type of issue applies to the V2 rocket. It was an innovation, it was the first use of an item like this in circumstances like this, but sparking a book does not make it as important as the author sets forth. Weapons that changed the world? The thrown rock, the pointed stick to jab with or throw, the knife, they were weapons that changed the world-- but the bow and arrow is an evolution of that pointed stick. It helps to think before you write.
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aglaves said 8:10PM on 8-22-2009
what about the AK47? surely the invention of that is quite important.
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richard said 1:32PM on 8-26-2009
Since the weapon was loaded from the back, it allowed for spiraled rifling in the barrel.
Just a little point, but muzzle-loading rifles (ie. with spiraled grooves in the barrel) were also possible. Notably the Baker rifle used by the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars.
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DaiLaughing said 12:52PM on 8-28-2009
I felt I had to comment but colcam and richard got there first so all I can do is agree with them. A very poor choice and badly explained:
1) Guillotine - not a weapon
2) Little boy - just one example of a type of weapon
3) Greek fire - didn't change the world as we don't even know what it was and the Greeks lost even with it (to me weapons that changed the world are copied by the opponents and others)
4) Ferguson rifle - rifling may have changed the the world (and not just the battlefied) but that particular rifle didn't really do a lot
5) The V2 - the V1 certainly changed Britain a lot but the V2 came too late. Maybe some missiles today look more like the V1 and use liquid fuel but the V1 was the first to have an impact (or you could go back to Congreve or the Chinese for rockets generally).
I can't imagine why this got thumbs up on Stumble so I'll try to fix that now.
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cherrick94 said 11:59PM on 1-25-2010
fuit do realise the V1 was a bomb with engines that had to us a track to launch, and a lot of calculating and fuel mesuring just to get it to hit london
Yon said 6:25PM on 1-25-2010
Good thing Adolf was a moron. He might have established a connection between his nuke scientists and Vernher Von Braun's rockets.
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wolfdog said 9:11PM on 1-25-2010
None of these things changed the world, they just changed the way wars were fought. The world is still the same, fighting over territory, money, drugs, political power, jelousy, hate, rage, but mostly, childish stupidity.
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cherrick94 said 11:45PM on 1-25-2010
I do like the article however, you need to check some facts about the atomic bomb
1. It was not a fission bomb, it just used the energy of spliting the atom, later there was a formed that used energy from spliting atoms to fuse two Hydrogen Ions. If we found out how to cause a chain fusing of rondom compunds the power would be awsome, stats, a single fusiing of hydrogen ions can power pitsburg for a month, however we do not no how to harnes it in a contrlolled environment with out using millions of dollars is in weapon grad plutonium.
2. Its not that the bomb killed so many people, its how effective it was. The fire bombings of Tokyo killed just as many people, with one difference, they used more than 600 planes, and for all Japan knew we could destroy every single one of their cities with one plane.
3 I'll give you that the weapons race was pretty world changing, however, the real reason they dropped the bomb was because if they did go through the ground attack, the causualities were estimated at over one million for the United states alone. It also allowed Japan to become the flourishing country it is now, the United states would lose one million, but Japan would loose twice as many, they didn't give, the won or died(if they could still fight back, they didn't know how much the Nukes actualy cost). this actualy reduced casualities on Japanese side
also all this info is from sources, I had to write a paper on the Atomic Bombings
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