Military Technology
Selected Themes
“Leave the Generals Alone”
“A continuation of political activity by other
means.”
Carl von Clausewitz
Athena and Ares
Athena: goddess of Wisdom
• Usually portrayed as warrior
• Represents rational, purposeful action
Ares: god of War (Combat)
• Represents irrational action for own sake
• Represents brutality of combat
Pre-gunpowder castles in Europe
 High curtain walls - defense against scaling
 Walls could be thin - curtain walls
 Crenellations - shields for archers
 Machicolations - "bay windows"
 Round towers
 Strong defensive advantage
Typical PreCannon
Fort,
1200’s,
Istanbul
Pre-Gunpowder Fort, Turkey
Bronze Cannon, Istanbul
Early Mortar, Germany
Wooden Cannon, Germany
Cannons and Castles
 Early firearms crude and weak (1300's)
 By 1400's, firearms were more powerful
 Curtain walls thickened, often faced with
timber or earth
 Crenellations and Machicolations removed
(voluntarily or by cannon fire)
 Moats widened
Iron Cannonballs
 Iron is twice as dense as stone and doesn’t
shatter as easily.
 Iron cannonballs caused early cannon to
burst due to the higher pressures in the
barrels
 By 1450, better gunpowder and metallurgy
made iron cannonballs usable
Iron Cannonballs
• Curtain walls replaced by lower earthen
structures
 Round towers modified to triangular to
remove "dead spot," then to arrowhead
shape or "Oreillon."
 Final result by 1500 - "star fort."
The Blind Spot
Oreillons
Star Fort
From Castle to Fort: Wurzburg, Germany
Fortification, Vatican
Star Fort
Fort McHenry, Maryland
Fort Monroe, Virginia
The Arms Trade, 1500
 Freelance engineers often went from town
to town designing forts
 Same engineers were frequently hired in
wartime as consultants by attackers.
Fortified
Town,
Holland
Fortified Town, Nicosia, Cyprus
Fort Pulaski, Georgia
Fort
Pulaski,
Georgia
Cannon are no Use if They Don’t
Hit Anything
• Gunners Quadrant, 1537
 Triangulation-Frisius, 1533
 Plane-table, 1551
 Cross-staff for elevation
 Theodolite - Leonard Digges, 1571, first
efficient surveying instrument: horizontal
and vertical circles.
Artillery Survey Tools, 1700
Stimuli to map-making
 Artillery technology
 Henry VIII seizes church lands, 1536 stimulus to surveying in England
 Copper engraving makes better map printing
possible
 Christopher Saxton - national atlas of
England, 1579 - first in W. Europe.
 Maps often made for military purposes,
frequently classified
Feeding the Troops
 Early Armies subsisted by foraging for food
 Problems with local population (Even in
WWII there were famines in Holland and
Greece caused by Nazi requisition of food
supplies)
 Impractical with large armies
 Armies had to keep moving because they
exhausted local food sources
Napoleon offers prizes for better
food preservation
 Nicholas Appert, ca. 1800. Put food in
champagne bottles, boiled
 In 1810 he was awarded a prize of 12,000
francs on condition he publish his method
 British introduce metal cans
 Cans in use by 1812 for military and
exploration
Cans Become Widespread
 Cans on sale in shops by 1830. Originally
upper-class status symbols. (A single can
cost 2/3 of a week's rent on a house)
• No can openers yet! Cans had to opened
with a chisel.
• Nobody knew yet why the process worked
The First Modern War
The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)
Technological weapons and
innovations
 Telecommunications
 Photojournalism
 Aerial observation (Balloons)
 Submarines (C.S.S. Hunley)
 Steam and iron-clad ships
 Railroads
 Rapid-fire weapons
C.S.S. Pioneer, New Orleans
C.S.S. Hunley
Other Modern Elements
 War of maneuver rather than pitched
battles; strategic planning
 First major war in which balance of power
described in terms of technology
 War telescoped 19th century into four
years:
– Early battles would have been familiar to
Napoleon,
– Ended with W.W.I style trench warfare.
I fear our people do not yet realize the magnitude of the
struggle they have entered upon, nor its probable duration,
and the sacrifices it will impose upon them... Their [the
Union's] resources are almost without limit...They have also a
navy that in a little while will blockade our ports and cut us
off from the rest of the world. They have nearly all the
workshops and skilled artisans of the country....We have no
ships, few arms, and few manufacturers. We will not succeed
until the financial power of the North is completely broken,
and this can occur only at the end of a long and bloody war.
The conflict will be mainly in Virginia. She will become the
Flanders of America before this war is over...I wish I could
talk to every man, woman and child in the State now, and
impress them with these views.
---Robert E. Lee
The Civil War
The Last Ancient War
World War I (1914-1918)
WWI Technology quite
advanced
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Radio
Airplanes
Tanks
Chemical Weapons
Machine Guns
Submarines
Radio
Total failure to revise tactics to
meet new technology
• Mass charges against machine gun fire.
• Feeling that one more push or more willpower
would earn victory.
• Allies lost more men on the Somme in one day
than U.S. lost in Korea.
• Desperate attempts by soldiers in field to redefine
old concepts of courage and valor.
• Cavalry charges
• Static trench warfare