For my timeline, Dead By Dawn, I'm trying to figure out which inventions were created as a result of that great big intercontinental scuffle. Television, satellites, certain types of guns etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
What inventions are directly tied to the Second World War?
- Thread starter Enigmajones
- Start date
Goldwater64
Banned
It's hard, because some were greatly helped along by it, but not completely tied to it.
Jet aircraft and atomic weapons were both being researched in the 1930s, but the war is really what gave them the kick in the pants they needed.
Jet aircraft and atomic weapons were both being researched in the 1930s, but the war is really what gave them the kick in the pants they needed.
In this timeline, thanks to among other things a far worse White Terror in Hungary, Szilard ends up in Britain where his ideas end up lost and as a result we never get the atom bomb, the main POD is in 1923. By Jet aircraft is definitely possible, there is a German Civil War from 1930-1934, a Third Balkans War from 1940-1944, and a World War that goes from 1957 until 1960. Not to mention the Franco-British War from 1950-1954, and the Indian Mutiny from 1953-1965. So there is a lot of war going on.
Fuel synthesis, syntetic rubber, SAM guidance systems, penicilin, quite a few fabrication methods, jerry cans.
The other computer build during the war was Zuse's in Germany.
The other computer build during the war was Zuse's in Germany.
The ancester of the computer was invented in Britain during the Victorian period it was called the difference engine. Babage also designed the more versitile analytical engine. Makes you wonder where things would be if he was less paranoid ans able to work with his contracters.
Cook
Banned
Television was invented prior to WW2 and was in operation in a number of countries. The BBC started their television broadcasts in 1936 and the coronation of George IV was televised, in Germany the Olympics were televised the same year.
Cook
Banned
WW2 actually hindered the development of Penicillin; Howard Florey demonstrated that Penicillin killed infectious bacteria in 1939 but the diversion of industry and resources to the war effort delayed clinical trials and mass production. Florey and Heatley had to leave Britain and go to the United States so that they could get access to the facilities and resources for large scale production.
I'm skeptical that in general, any technology ever absolutely needs a war to be developed. This is of course a more reasonable thing to claim for an actual weapon, like a tank, or aircraft carriers and the planes meant for it, or gas warfare. But I believe if you look at the general trends, even technologies either clearly only useful for weapons or that turn out to mainly be so, like submarines, are often developed during peacetime.
War clearly accelerates the pace but as Cook pointed out, can retard it too. Infrastructure often depends on war considerations and its development can influence the directions technology takes. For instance WWII involved the construction and expansion of a great many airfields; this influenced postwar aviation to focus on landplanes, which probably accelerated the impact of aviation and further fed its expansion, since landplanes allow fewer compromises of aerodynamic performance and at a lower cost (perhaps not lower overall, since airfields are rather costly, but that cost was borne by someone else's budget; the airframe makers "rode free" on it as it were.)
I think much of the gee-whiz impression WWII gives has to do with the fact that the prior decade had been one of global depression, which results from the irrational way capitalism distributes wealth; the war broke the logjam as it were. This unjamming quality of warfare, allowing a capitalist nation to impose planning and generally coming at a time of stagnation (economic collapse being a cause of warfare) helps to perpetuate the impression that warfare is good for development. And it is, if we accept the idea that the inefficiencies of capitalism are inevitable and only war is an acceptable means of getting past them. But to me, the fact that many technologies and much infrastructure can be developed at a time when others overseas are actively decimating much of the products of industry, killing off some potential workers and taking others from the workplace, and disrupting the supply and marketing channels, is a demonstration of the gap between peacetime economic potential and the efficiency of capitalism as a means of organizing production and development!
Now since these inefficiencies are given and admittedly no one has come up with a clearly superior peacetime alternative, it is realistic to say "the war enabled this that or the other." But I still balk at the suggestion "we could only have technology X if there was this war!"
War clearly accelerates the pace but as Cook pointed out, can retard it too. Infrastructure often depends on war considerations and its development can influence the directions technology takes. For instance WWII involved the construction and expansion of a great many airfields; this influenced postwar aviation to focus on landplanes, which probably accelerated the impact of aviation and further fed its expansion, since landplanes allow fewer compromises of aerodynamic performance and at a lower cost (perhaps not lower overall, since airfields are rather costly, but that cost was borne by someone else's budget; the airframe makers "rode free" on it as it were.)
I think much of the gee-whiz impression WWII gives has to do with the fact that the prior decade had been one of global depression, which results from the irrational way capitalism distributes wealth; the war broke the logjam as it were. This unjamming quality of warfare, allowing a capitalist nation to impose planning and generally coming at a time of stagnation (economic collapse being a cause of warfare) helps to perpetuate the impression that warfare is good for development. And it is, if we accept the idea that the inefficiencies of capitalism are inevitable and only war is an acceptable means of getting past them. But to me, the fact that many technologies and much infrastructure can be developed at a time when others overseas are actively decimating much of the products of industry, killing off some potential workers and taking others from the workplace, and disrupting the supply and marketing channels, is a demonstration of the gap between peacetime economic potential and the efficiency of capitalism as a means of organizing production and development!
Now since these inefficiencies are given and admittedly no one has come up with a clearly superior peacetime alternative, it is realistic to say "the war enabled this that or the other." But I still balk at the suggestion "we could only have technology X if there was this war!"
You mean George VI? George IV died in 1830.
While radar was developed before WW2, centimetric radar was invented during the war. Radar 'talk down', very important in the modern civil aviation world, was also an invention of WW2.
Thinking about it without all those DC3s etc. and a slower development of the jet engine civil aviation is going to be seriously retarded with no WW2. Without it flying boats may last longer.
You mean George VI? George IV died in 1830.
While radar was developed before WW2, centimetric radar was invented during the war. Radar 'talk down', very important in the modern civil aviation world, was also an invention of WW2.
Thinking about it without all those DC3s etc. and a slower development of the jet engine civil aviation is going to be seriously retarded with no WW2. Without it flying boats may last longer.
On the boats, yes, see my post--without all those landing strips, many of them built from the get-go with hard concrete surfaces, water planes would have been somewhat more favored. Especially if they could reduce their liabilities by devising methods of landing on and taking off from water that cost them less in drag when airborne--if we are stuck with "classic" flying boat hulls there will be a movement to upgrade airports on land regardless, to take advantage of the superior aerodynamics and weight savings of a pure landplane. Now, I can imagine some technologies that might be made to work to give seaplanes an extended lease on life--either hydrofoil landing gear (my favorite, but not clear it can work and only of use in water) or hovercraft bellies (favored by many others, studied in RAND studies and given a thumbs-up, but somehow even now not yet developed!). But these will still leave the seaplanes at some disadvantage, eventually good airports for land planes will be upgraded or built from scratch anyhow. But the delays might greatly slow the aeronautical revolution that snowballed so fast OTL. Still I think the day of the jetliner, whether it lands on concrete or water, will be coming fast even in a timeline that avoids all war completely.
Assuming that is that the world economies average around the same sorts of performance they did OTL. That's the big question mark. OTL WWII was a massive reset button; without pressing that button (which at least avoids the devastation the war caused) will the capitalist world be booming again by the late 1940s? If it is, then "all those DC-3s" will be either built by Douglas and sold directly to civil customers, or more likely a lot of them will be replaced by other models built by competitors--American, European, possibly Japanese. Either the airstrips will be built for them or they'll fly off water. Actually Douglas was already trying to build and sell DC-4s when the War Department came knocking with long orders for modified -3s. (And all the DC-4s they had in stock, the Army wound up owning them too. They, Boeing, and Lockheed were moving toward pressurized, high-altitude planes with supercharged engines anyway. And while Boeing and Consolidated competed with British makers for the transoceanic flying boat market, their landplane designs were anticipating spreading runways without the war to catalyze them anyway.
I really think it's weird no one offered a hydrofoil seaplane/flying boat design in the late '30s; I wasn't sure cavitation didn't make that approach infeasible then I found some evidence it was actually tried for a real plane in Italy in the 1920s, and highly recommended decades later, but still never actually flown. Sigh.
The war was good for developing workable standards fast and then spreading them--both by top-down orders and sheer memetic dominance--once talk-down landings were developed for instance, a whole new generation of pilots was trained to accept them as normal, postwar they overwhelmed the older pilots who had to adapt or be squeezed out. In a non-war timeline, I suppose the conservatism of the older generation will prevail longer--unless they take to landing aids with enthusiasm on their own merits, as I suppose they might well do!
Now, if without the prospect of war the world's industrialized economies continue in their investment-shy funk the way they did earlier in the 1930s, yes, it will be a retarded world--even by the standards of already widely known tech, let alone futuristic stuff. But that contemptible funk is a major reason war clouds did loom on the horizon--people were turning toward left-wing or right wing radicalism in droves, hence the jingoism. If by some subtle ASB intervention cooler heads prevail throughout, someone somewhere is going to kick-start a serious and comprehensive program of infrastructural revival, and that will lead either to the engine of capitalism turning over again at last, or fading away gradually into the new model of more or less planned industrial development--either way new and futuristic modes of doing things should appeal, to venturesome capitalists or central planners eager to put their progressive stamp on things.
Holy shit, did that get creepy at the end!
edit: Also, pykrete was invented during the Second World War. Not really a useful invention, but I think it's worth mentioning
the introduction of jet civilian aircraft maybe, but not civil aviation.
the airlines actually will get their lockheed constellations earlier than otl
Nylon - invented in 1935
helicopter - already started development pre-war
fuel synthesis - fisher-tropsch process was developed in the 1920s, refined in the 30s
metal detectors - 1920s
synthetic rubber - 1920s/30s
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