Scientific discoveries during the First World War. Barbed wire and barbed wire

The First World War gave mankind a number of unexpected inventions that had nothing to do with the military industry. Today we recall only some of them, which have become firmly established in everyday life and have radically changed our lifestyle.

1. Sanitary pads

The history of this household item, which has become familiar to women for a long time, is associated with the appearance of cellucotone or cellulose wool - a material with a very high degree of absorption. And they began to produce it even before the start of the First World War, specialists from a small at that time American company Kimberly-Clark.

The head of the research department, Ernst Mahler, as well as the company's vice president, James Kimberley, toured pulp and paper mills in Germany, Austria, and the Scandinavian countries in 1914. There they noticed a material that absorbed moisture five times faster and cost manufacturers half the price of cotton.

Kimberly and Mahler brought samples of cellulose wadding to America, where they registered a new trademark. When the US entered World War I in 1917, Kimberly-Clark began to produce dressings at a speed of 100-150 meters per minute.

However, the Red Cross nurses, who dressed the wounded and appreciated the new dressing material, began to use it in a different capacity. This misuse of cellucotton became the basis of the company's prosperity.

"After the end of the war in 1918, the production of dressings had to be suspended, since the main consumers - the army and the Red Cross - no longer needed them," say the current representatives of the company.

Nearly a century ago, entrepreneurial Kimberly-Clark businessmen bought leftover cellulose wool from the military and created a new product and a new market. After two years of intensive research, experimentation and marketing, the company produced a sanitary napkin made from 40 thin layers of cellulose wadding wrapped in gauze.

In 1920, a small wooden shed in Nina, Wisconsin, began mass-producing pads, which were made by hand by women workers. The new product was dubbed Kotex (short for cotton texture). He entered the shelves in October 1920, about two years after the signing of the armistice agreement.

2. ... and paper handkerchiefs

The company agreed with pharmacies that sold pads of this brand to put two boxes at the checkout. A woman took a package with gaskets from one, put 50 cents into another, but if these boxes were not observed at the checkout, then one could simply say the word "Kotex". It sounded like a password, and the seller immediately understood what was needed.

Gradually, the new product gained popularity, but not as quickly as Kimberly-Clark would have liked. It was necessary to look for a new application for the wonderful material. In the early 1920s, one of the company's employees, Bert Furness, had the idea to ennoble pulp under a hot iron, which made its surface smooth and soft. In 1924, after a series of experiments, face wipes were born, which they called Kleenex.

3. Quartz lamp

In the winter of 1918, about half of all children in Berlin suffered from rickets, one of the symptoms of which is bone deformities. At that time, the causes of this disease were unknown. It was assumed that this had something to do with poverty.

The Berlin physician Kurt Gouldchinsky noticed that many of his rickets patients were very pale, without any tan. He decided to experiment on four patients, including a three-year-old boy. All that is now known about this child is that his name was Arthur.

Kurt Guldchinsky began to irradiate this group of patients with ultraviolet rays from mercury-quartz lamps. After several sessions, the doctor found that the skeletal system in children began to strengthen.

In May 1919, with the onset of the summer season, he began to sunbathe the children. The results of his experiments caused a great resonance. Throughout Germany, children began to sit in front of quartz lamps. Where there were not enough lamps, as in Dresden, for example, even lamps taken by social workers from street lamps went into action.

Later, scientists found that ultraviolet radiation lamps contribute to the production of vitamin D, which is actively involved in the synthesis and absorption of calcium by the body. Calcium, in turn, is needed for the development and strengthening of bones, teeth, hair and nails. So the treatment of children who suffered from malnutrition during the war years led to a very useful discovery about the benefits of ultraviolet rays.

4. Summer time

The idea of ​​moving the hands forward one hour in spring and one hour back in autumn existed even before the outbreak of the First World War. Benjamin Franklin stated it in a letter to the Paris Journal as early as 1784. "Since people do not go to bed at sunset, candles have to be wasted," the politician wrote. "But in the morning, sunlight is wasted, as people wake up later than the sun rises."

Similar proposals were made in New Zealand in 1895 and in Great Britain in 1909. However, they came to nothing. The First World War contributed to the realization of this idea.

Germany was short of coal. On April 30, 1916, the authorities of this country issued a decree according to which the clock hands were moved from 23:00 in the evening to 24:00. The next morning, everyone had to wake up, thus an hour earlier, saving an hour of daylight.

The experience of Germany rather quickly migrated to other countries. Britain switched to daylight saving time on May 21, 1916, followed by other European countries. On March 19, 1918, the US Congress established several time zones and introduced daylight saving time from March 31 until the end of World War I.

After the armistice, daylight saving time was canceled, but the idea of ​​​​saving daylight was left to wait for better times, and, as we know, these times eventually came.

5. Tea bags

The tea bag doesn't owe its origins to wartime issues. It is believed that for the first time tea packaged in small bags began to be sent to its customers by an American tea merchant in 1908.

One of the fans of this drink dropped or dipped such a bag into a cup of boiling water, marking the beginning of a very convenient and quick way to brew tea. So, at least, representatives of the tea business say.

During the First World War, the German company Teekanne remembered this idea and began to supply tea bags to the troops. The soldiers called them "tea bombs".

6. Wristwatch

It is not true that wrist watches were invented specifically for military personnel during the First World War. However, it is certain that during these years the number of men who wore wristwatches increased many times over.

Already after the war, wristwatches became a familiar attribute by which time was checked. However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, any man who lived in abundance did this with a pocket watch on a chain. Women were pioneers in this regard - Queen Elizabeth I, for example, had a small watch that she could wear on her wrist if necessary.

But for the participants in the First World War, timing became an increasingly important issue, especially when it was necessary to synchronize mass demonstrations or artillery shelling. A watch appeared that left both hands of a soldier free, that is, a wrist watch. They were also comfortable for aviators. So a pocket watch on a solid chain, one might say, has sunk into oblivion.

During the Boer Wars, Mappin and Webb produced wristwatches with lugs through which a strap could be threaded. Later, this company, not without pride, declared that its products were very useful during the battle of Omdurman, the decisive battle of the Second Anglo-Sudan War.

But it was the First World War that made watches an everyday necessity. It was especially important to coordinate the actions of different units during the creation of an artillery curtain of fire - that is, ground artillery fire before the infantry marched. A mistake in a few minutes could cost many of the lives of their own soldiers.

The distances between different positions were too great to use signals, there was too little time to transmit them, and it would be unwise to do this in full view of the enemy. So wristwatches were a great way out of the situation.

The H. Williamson company, which produced the so-called trench watches in Coventry, in its report for 1916 reported: "It is known that already one in four soldiers has a wrist watch, and the remaining three will acquire them at the first opportunity."

Some brands of wristwatches, which have become a symbol of luxury and prestige, date back to the times of the First World War. The Cartier Tank model was introduced in 1917 by the French watchmaker Louis Cartier, who created this watch inspired by the shape of the new Renault tanks.

7. Vegetarian sausages

If you think that soy sausages were born somewhere in the mid-1960s in California thanks to some hippies, then you are mistaken. Soy sausages were invented by Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of post-war Germany. This food product has become a symbol of endurance and conscientiousness - to say that the taste of sausages left much to be desired would be too cruel.

During World War I, Adenauer was the mayor of Cologne, whose inhabitants were starving due to the British blockade. Possessing a lively mind and the talent of an inventor, Adenauer began to look for products that could replace bread and meat in the diet of the townspeople.

He started with a bread roll recipe that used barley, rice, and corn flour instead of wheat flour. It turned out quite edible until Romania entered the war and the supply of cornmeal came to an end. From experimental bread, the mayor of the city moved on to experimental sausages. He suggested using soy instead of meat. His work began to be called "sausages of the world" or "Cologne sausage". Adenauer decided to patent his recipe, but the Imperial Patent Office refused him.

It turns out that when it came to sausages and sausages, the rules of Germany were very strict - to be called such, these products had to contain meat. In short, no meat - no sausages. It may seem strange, but Adenauer was more fortunate in this regard with the enemy of Germany: the British King George V granted him a patent for soy sausage on June 26, 1918.

Later, Adenauer invented the "electric caterpillar rake", a device for removing dust generated by a car, a toaster lamp, and much more. However, none of these developments were put into production. But the patented "Cologne sausage" with soy content went down in history.

Vegetarians around the world should raise a glass of bio-wine to the humble German finance minister who created such an indispensable dish for them.

8. Zipper

Since the middle of the 19th century, many people have tried to create a device that would help to connect the parts of clothing and shoes in the fastest and most convenient way. However, luck smiled at the American engineer Gideon Sundbeck, who emigrated to America from Sweden. He became the chief designer of the Universal Fastener Company, where he invented the Hookless Fastener (fastener without hooks): a slider-slider connected the teeth attached to two textile tapes. Sundbeck received a patent for his version of the zipper in 1913.

The US military began to use these zippers in military uniforms and shoes, especially in the navy. After the First World War, zippers migrated to civilian clothes, where they continue to live to this day.

9. Stainless steel

For steel that doesn't rust or corrode, we have Harry Brearley of Sheffield, England, to thank. According to documents from the city archives, "in 1913, Brearley developed what is considered the first example of "stainless" or "clean" steel - a product that revolutionized the steel industry and became a major component of the infrastructure of the modern world."

The British military was just puzzling over what metal is best to make weapons. The problem was that gun barrels, under the influence of high temperatures and friction, began to deform. Metallurgist Brearley was asked to create an alloy that could withstand high temperatures, chemical elements, and so on.

Brearley began to conduct experiments, testing the properties of various alloys, including those with a high chromium content. According to legend, many of the experiments, in his opinion, ended in failure, and the rejected ingots ended up in a pile of scrap metal. However, Brearley later noticed that some of them did not succumb to rust. Thus, in 1913, Brearley discovered the secret of stainless steel.

During the First World War, new aircraft engines were made from it, but later spoons, knives and forks, as well as countless surgical instruments, without which no hospital in the world can do now, began to make stainless steel.

10. Communication system for pilots

Before the First World War, the aviator was in the air one on one with the aircraft. He could not communicate with other pilots or with ground services. At the beginning of the war, communication between army units was carried out mainly using telegraph lines. However, shelling or tanks often put them out of action.

The Germans also managed to pick up the key to the British telegraph ciphers. At that time, other methods of communication were used - couriers, flags, pigeon mail, light signals or horse messengers, but each of them had its own drawbacks. Aviators had to make do with shouts and gestures. It didn't fit anymore. Something had to be done. The solution was wireless.

Radio technology was then in its infancy. During the First World War, relevant research was carried out in Brookland and Biggin Hill, by the end of 1916 serious progress was made. "The first attempts to install radiotelephones on aircraft ended in failure, as the noise of the engine created a lot of interference," writes historian Keith Trower in one of his books on the development of radio in Britain.

According to him, later this problem was solved by creating a helmet with a built-in microphone and headphones. Thanks to this, civil aviation in the post-war years "took off" to new heights, and gestures and shouts, with which aviators had to get in touch, are a thing of the past.

French trench armor against bullets and shrapnel. 1915

Sappenpanzer appeared on the Western Front in 1916. In June 1917, after capturing some German body armor, the Allies conducted research. According to these documents, the 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 assembled were found to be less heavy than 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 English Mark I to protect their faces from shrapnel.

Barricade.

German soldiers try on the captured Russian "mobile barricade".

Mobile infantry shield (France).

Experimental helmets for machine gunners. USA, 1918

USA. Protection for bomber pilots. Armored pants.

Various options for armored shields for police officers from Detroit.

An Austrian trench shield that could be worn as a breastplate.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Japan.

Armored shield for orderlies

Individual armor protection with the uncomplicated name "Turtle". As far as I understand, this thing did not have a “sex” and the fighter himself moved it.

Shovel-shield McAdam, Canada, 1916. Dual use was supposed: both as a shovel and a shooting shield. It was ordered by the Canadian government in a series of 22,000 pieces. As a result, the device was uncomfortable as a shovel, uncomfortable because of the too low location of the loophole as a rifle shield, and was pierced through by rifle bullets. After the war, they were melted down as scrap metal.

I could not pass by such a wonderful stroller (though already post-war). UK, 1938

And finally, "an armored cubicle of a public toilet - pepelats." Armored observation post. Great Britain.

It's not enough to sit behind a shield. To "pick out" the enemy from behind the shield with what? And here “the need (soldiers) are cunning for inventions ... Quite exotic means were used.

French bomber. Medieval technology is in demand again.

Well, quite ... a slingshot!

But they had to be moved somehow. Here the engineering and technical genius and production capacities again entered into operation.

An urgent and rather stupid reworking of any self-propelled mechanism sometimes gave rise to amazing creations.

On April 24, 1916, an anti-government uprising broke out in Dublin (Easter Rising - Easter Rising) and the British needed at least some armored vehicles to move troops along the shelled streets.

On April 26, in just 10 hours, specialists from the 3rd Reserve Cavalry Regiment, using the equipment of the workshops of the Southern Railway in Inchicore, were able to assemble an armored car from an ordinary commercial 3-ton Daimler truck 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’ll just limit myself to one photo for a general idea.

And this is an example of the banal hanging of steel shields on the sides 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 protection for the driver, engine, and even the rest of the crew in front.

And how do you like this "aerotachanka" from 1915?

Or like this...

1915 Sizaire-Berwick "Wind Wagon". Death to the enemy (from diarrhea), the infantry will blow away.

Later, after WW1, the idea of ​​an air cart 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 hull made of wood, the front of which was protected by a sheet of bulletproof armor. In front of the hull there was a control compartment, in which the driver was located. To observe 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 was the fighting compartment, in which a 7.62-mm DT tank machine gun was mounted on a turret, equipped with a light shield cover. Machine gun fire 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 Oberleutnant Fellner in Budapest designed just 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. Reservation 6 mm. It was armed with one Schwarzlose M07 / 12 8 mm machine gun (3000 rounds of ammunition) in the turret, which could, in principle, be used against air targets. The car was radio-equipped with a Morse code telegraph from Siemens & Halske. The speed of the device is up to 26 km / h. Weight 3 tons, length 5.67 m, width 1.8 m, height 2.48 m. Crew 2 people.

In June 1915, the production of the Marienwagen tractor 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 came up with just such a hay wire mower.

On June 30, 1915, another of the prototypes was assembled in the courtyard of the London prison "Wormwood Scrubs" by soldiers of the 20th Squadron of the Royal Naval Aviation School. As a basis, the chassis of the American Killen-Straight tractor with wooden tracks in caterpillars was taken.

In July, an armored hull from the Delano-Belleville armored car was experimentally installed on it, then a hull from the Austin and a turret from the Lanchester.

Tank FROT-TURMEL-LAFFLY, a wheeled tank built on the chassis of the Laffly road roller. Protected by 7 mm armor, weighs about 4 tons, armed with two 8 mm machine guns and a mitrailleuse of unknown type and caliber. By the way, the armament in the photograph is much stronger than the declared one - 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 (the same Mr. Frot), the machine was intended to attack wire barriers, which the machine 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 guns firing grappling hooks to overcome enemy wire obstacles. The photo shows the calculations of such guns.

For Russia, the First World War actually began August 4, 1914 from the East Prussian operation, in which the Russian army won the first military victories, but already in mid-August the Russian army of General Samsonov was completely defeated in the battle of Tannenberg.

The First World War served as a serious impetus for the development of military technologies. During the war years, many military-technical inventions appeared for the mass murder of people, as well as means of protection against mass destruction ....

During the First World War, aviation first appeared on the battlefields, the first aircraft were used for reconnaissance and bombing, submarines, torpedo boats, the first tanks, flamethrowers, machine guns, mortars, anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. In the First World War, poisonous chemicals were first used, poisonous gases - chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, and gas masks were invented to protect against poisonous substances.

The historic drawing on a postcard from 1917 shows a propaganda portrayal of a "Gas Alarm" in the German bunker on a World War One battlefield. Chemical weapons were used during WWI. The First World War was carried out in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, East Asia and on the world's oceans from 1914-1918. Photo: Sammlung Sauer - NO WIRE SERVICE

Chemical weapon used in the war by all countries. In 1914, the French were the first to use tear gas grenades, the Germans used tear gas against Russian troops in the Battle of Bolimov.

On the night of July 12-13, 1917, in the battles near the Belgian city of Ypres, Germany used a liquid blister agent, which was called mustard gas. Anglo-French troops were fired upon by German mines containing an oily poisonous liquid known as "mustard gas" or "mustard substance". 2,490 people received blistering lesions of varying severity, 87 of them died.

The Russians used chemical weapons for the first time against the Germans during the offensive on March 22-30, 1916 of the Northern and Western Fronts in the area of ​​​​Dvinsk and Lake Naroch - Lake Vishnevskoye, where the Russian army suffered heavy losses - about 80 thousand killed, wounded and maimed soldiers and officers. Thanks to the March offensive of the Russian army, German attacks on the French front near Verdun stopped from March 22 to 30, and Germany transferred additional troops to the Russian front.

The writer Alexander Moritz Frei, who served in the First World War in the same regiment with Corporal Adolf Schicklgruber (Hitler), said that the future Fuhrer wore a rather lush mustache, like the German Emperor Wilhelm II. However, on the orders of the commander, Adolf had to shave off his mustache, as they prevented him from properly putting on a gas mask.

First tanks

The Russian government ordered from England a batch of tanks (tank) for drinking water, under the guise of tanks, by rail, trains transported the first tanks to the front, which Russian soldiers called " tubs».

The designers of the first tanks gravitated towards gigantomania. Military self-propelled vehicles of the First World War were much larger than the tanks of the Second World War. Russian engineer Lebedenko designed the tsar tank - an armored fighting vehicle with wheels 9 meters in diameter, armed with machine guns and cannons, but due to obvious defects in the design, the tank elm in the ground was not in battles, but stood at the test site, and in 1923 it dismantled for scrap.

The first military aviation.

The First World War made aviation a full-fledged branch of the military. The first reconnaissance aircraft, fighters and bombers appeared. The real legend of the "German" war was the "Ilya Muromets" - a Russian heavy aircraft that the Germans could not shoot down for a year and a half.

There were legends about the super-armor covering the Ilya Muromets, but the reason for the "resilience and invulnerability" of the aircraft was hidden in a successful design, and not a miracle armor. At the end of 1916, a group of German fighters attacked the lone Ilya Muromets for more than an hour, but the Germans could not bring it down.

In the end, the Russian plane made an emergency landing, as 3 out of 4 engines failed, the plane received more than 300 holes, the ammunition in machine-gun belts and cartridges in regular Mausers ran out.

The aviators of the First World War carried out manual bombing, throwing bombs from the open cockpit, which was not safe for the pilot himself.

In the First World War, aviators developed new designs of zeppelins, airships, light aircraft, the first simulators for training pilots and snipers.

Military engineers and designers have developed new technical means of assisting aviation on the water. A light aircraft could board a warship for refueling, replenishment of ammunition, and take off successfully to continue the battle.

Strong searchlights were used to detect aircraft in the sky at night or during heavy cloud cover,

as well as special "hearing devices" that detect the operation of aircraft engines.

Military submarine. Russian "Panther"

In the "German" war, the first ineffective steps were taken by the military submarine fleet. By the beginning of World War I, Russia had 22 submarines. Throughout the war, not a single submarine sank even a fishing boat, but dozens of crews of submariners died during the operation of the submarines. The Russian submarine "Panther", built in 1916, became the only submarine in the world that participated in three wars: the First World War (or "imperialist"), the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War.

In July 2015, Swedish divers discovered a sunken Russian submarine with Cyrillic inscriptions on board off the east coast of Sweden at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The Russian submarine is 20 meters long and no more than 3.5 meters wide. Swedish expert is convinced that the discovered submarine is a submarine Som", sunken May 10, 1916 in the Baltic Sea in a collision with the Swedish steamer Ingermanland. Seven submarines of this series, modeled on the American submarine "Fulton", were built at the Nevsky Shipyard in 1904-1906 and were used for reconnaissance and patrolling the Baltic Sea during the First World War.

Railway transport.

at the beginning of the 20th century, railway construction in the Russian Empire was quite active, from 1900 to 1904 8222 versts of railways were built, from 1905 to 1909 - about 6000 versts of the railway track.

In the pre-war period, railway transport in Russia was treated as a purely commercial enterprise - it was required to ensure maximum income while reducing costs in every possible way, and in 1910-1913 only 3466 miles of railways were built.

The Russian Empire entered the war with a railway network consisting of 38 railways providing transport links with a total length of 71,542 km. Of these, 24 railways (47,861 km) belonged to the state, and 14 railways (23,681 km) belonged to private companies.

10,762 km of railway tracks were under construction. Before the outbreak of the First World War, the construction of railways was carried out more intensively by private companies; by the summer of 1913, private companies had built about 7877 km of railways, while 2885 km were built at the expense of the state.

In terms of the level of development, the railway transport of Russia lagged significantly behind the railway transport of Germany, and this lag became threatening to the interests of the empire.

During the First World War, railway transport was required to ensure the continuous operation of the front and rear railways; for this, all the forces and resources of the Russian Empire were mobilized.

In 1914, 32 railway lines approached the Russian border from the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which 14 were double-track railways, and only 13 railway lines went to the border from the Russian side, of which only 8 lines were double-track.

Machine guns, cannons, artillery.

During the First World War, the machine guns of the British gunsmith Hiram Stevens Maxim were called the "infernal mower". Maxim created the first machine gun in 1883, it was a very reliable, simple and durable weapon, working on a very simple system.

The Tula gunsmiths Tretyakov and Pastukhov, having familiarized themselves with the production of machine guns in England in 1905, conducted extensive design and technological research at the Tula Arms Plant "Tula Arsenal", and significantly reworked and largely improved the design of "Maxim". Russian designers changed the design of many parts of the machine gun and in 1908 began to use new-style cartridges with a pointed bullet.

In 1908-10, the Russian designer Sokolov and the Tula engineer Zakharov created a very successful mobile, maneuverable infantry wheeled machine and machine gun, significantly reducing the total weight of the gun to 20 kg. The machine gun, modernized by Tula gunsmiths, was adopted in 1910 by the Russian army under the official name "7.62-mm easel machine gun".

Animals at war.

Not only mechanisms were sent to serve in the army. The first attempts were made to combat training of animals. The famous trainer Vladimir Durov in 1915 suggested using seals to search for mines. In total, he managed to train 20 animals, but all the animals were poisoned, according to contemporaries, by German intelligence agents.

Horses remained the main draft force on the roads of the First World War. On the eve of the First World War, the Russian guards cavalry was reinforced and performed well prepared. Every war brings unforeseen surprises that were difficult to guess in peacetime.

At the beginning of the war, it turned out that the times of dashing cavalry attacks had receded into the realm of legend. A cavalryman with a pike or saber was powerless against the massive fire of a machine gun, cannon, and artillery. A cavalryman with a gun was also an unsuitable fighter, since he was a good target for shooting, while he himself remained a poorly shooting rider. The battle on foot prevailed, on cavalry attacks.

Pigeons have also been successfully trained for aerial photography. The first patent for a miniature pigeon camera with good image quality was received in 1908 by the inventor Julius Neubronner (German), but during the First World War, aerial photography with pigeons was not widely used.

On board the submarine and in the trenches of the First World War, one could often meet cats, which were detectors for the soldiers to control the purity of the air and warned of the next gas attack.

In the First World War, trained sanitary dogs were used as medical assistants, scouts, messengers, telegraph wire layers, to ensure communication.

The dogs carried the cap of the wounded soldier to the medical battalion and brought orderlies to provide first aid, the dogs delivered orders to the front line in capsules attached to the body.

Military curiosities.

Enigma(from other Greek αἴνιγμα - a riddle; English Enigma) - a disk encryption machine during the Second World War, the mechanism is based on disks with 26 resoldering. The first mention of enigma dates back to 1918, and the most widespread enigma was in Nazi Germany “Wehrmacht Enigma” (Wehrmacht Enigma). In the 1920s, a whole family of electromechanical machines was created that were used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. The cryptanalyst of the Anti-Hitler Coalition was able to decipher a large number of messages encrypted with Enigma. Especially for these purposes, a machine was created with the code name "Bomb".

In addition to successful military developments, curious inventions appeared in the armies of war participants. Skis for crossing water barriers, combat catamarans were practically not used in the army.

The Germans invented heavy armor transformers in which it was difficult to move, in addition, the armor easily shot through machine gun bullets.

Trench armor against bullets and shrapnel, body armor, armored vehicles, mobile barricades, caterpillar tractors, etc. There were even funny inventions - a bomb-throwing machine, a slingshot, etc. Articles

The time will come when our descendants will be surprised that we did not know such obvious things.
Seneca

Oddly enough, wars give rise to the most unexpected inventions, often unrelated to the military industry. So maybe it's worth agreeing that war is the engine of progress? Or maybe, after all, the needs that are still felt during the war force our mind to be more? Be that as it may, it gave humanity many innovations that have changed the quality of life for the better. (source: BBC Berlin, Stephen Evans).

1 Wrist watch

Although they were not created specifically for the military, but as an invention appeared long before the war, it was during the war years that their advantage over pocket watches was appreciated. Why? The answer is simple - they left the soldier's two hands free, and the definition of time for the military was very important.

2

During the treatment of children suffering from rickets - bone deformities in the winter of 1918, thanks to experiments, the German doctor Kurt Guldchinsky established that exposure to ultraviolet rays has a beneficial effect on patients. Thus, the need and benefits of ultraviolet rays for the production of vitamin D in the body and, accordingly, the strengthening of bone tissue became clear. As a result, quartz lamps were introduced into medical use.

3

First, a highly absorbent one was invented - cellucotone. It began to be produced by Kimberly-Clark (America) even before the start of the war. And during the war years, nurses of the Red Cross began to use this material as a dressing. And, having appreciated its merits, they were also used for personal hygiene purposes. Gaskets under the name Kotex went on sale already in 1920.

4

In the same 1920, one of the employees of the same American company proposed to improve the source material - cellulose. And it was placed under a hot iron, which contributed to the transformation of its surface into soft and smooth. That is how, in 1924, paper napkins for the face appeared - Kleenex.

Despite the fact that an American tea merchant began to sprinkle tea in small bags as early as 1908, during the First World War, the Teekanne company, borrowing this idea, began to supply tea bags to soldiers on a massive scale. These "tea bombs" apparently fell in love with consumers, and since then all tea companies have been producing tea bags.

6

It is curious that the birthplace of soy sausages is by no means America. The author of this invention, oddly enough, is Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of post-war Germany. The fact is that, being the mayor of Cologne during the war and observing the hunger of the inhabitants during the British blockade, he began to look for substitutes for bread and meat.
He first experimented with bread and then decided to try soybeans for sausage production. But Germany did not patent his invention. This was done by the British King George V in 1918.

7

The need for stainless steel arose due to the fact that existing gun barrels deformed under the influence of friction and high temperatures. In the course of many experiments, the English metallurgist Harry Brealy managed to develop the composition of steel, which is considered the first example of the so-called "clean" steel. And it happened in 1913.

8

Before the war, there was no connection between the pilot and the ground. At the beginning of World War I, interaction between army units was carried out by telegraph. In 1916, after appropriate research, they found a way out of this situation - they began to use wireless communication.

9

The hookless fastener was invented in 1913 by an American engineer who emigrated to Sweden, Gideon Sundbeck. During the war years, the American military, especially the soldiers of the navy, began to use it in military uniforms and even shoes.

10

Long before the First World War, there was the idea of ​​moving the clock hands an hour ahead before the onset of summer soared in the scientific circles of Europe.
However, only the First World War contributed to the realization of this innovation. Since there was a shortage of coal in Germany, on April 30, 1916, a decree was issued, which, in order to save daylight hours, obliged to move the clock forward one hour.
Then this idea migrated to other European countries. Despite the fact that at the end of the war, the transition to summer time was canceled, the innovation waited - after all, its finest hour.