The 12 Biggest Breakthroughs in Military Technology
1 Plate Armor Protects the Body from Injury Warfare is when nations have armed conflicts All through history people have had wars At first they used whatever weapons were around They used sticks and rocks But over the years military technology has changed a lot One of the first inventions to change the way wars were fought was armor Armor was made to protect the body from injury There were two types of armor Chain mail was made up of many small rings of metal The rings were wired together Knights in the Middle Ages wore chain mail suits Well made chain mail could stop swords and spears 44
Plate armor was made of plates of metal The plates were pounded and shaped by hand At first the plates were sewn into clothes Later they were joined together with leather or brass buckles Plate armor could cover the whole body There were special pieces to cover sensitive body parts These were places like armpits elbows and knees This horse Chain mail and plate armor were popular from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries Armor worked very well to protect and body armor from 1507 weighs almost 100 pounds 50 kg 45-55 Weight in pounds 20 25 kg of an average suit of armor in the 1400s Chain mail was made of tiny rings of metal Chain mail could block swords and spears Plate armor offered better protection but was very heavy Weapons were invented that could pierce armor knights from punctures and crushing It stopped bullets from early firearms It stopped arrows from crossbows Armor protected horses from lances But armor had one problem It was very heavy Then it had another problem Weapons were developed that could pierce armor These included the longbow and powerful rifles By the end of the eighteenth century armor was used more for decoration than protection 55
2 Gunpowder Explodes on the Scene Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese in the ninth century Alchemists were looking for a way to help people live longer They mixed together saltpeter sulfur and charcoal The result was a powder that exploded For the next 400 years the Chinese used gunpowder to fight their wars They would put tubes of gunpowder on arrows The gunpowder would ignite as it flew toward the enemy This invention was called flying fire In the thirteenth century gunpowder spread to Europe In the fifteenth century gunpowder was used in guns The gunpowder would ignite in the gun barrel The explosion would propel bullets faster and further These bullets could pass through armor Gunpowder was also used in cannons Cannonballs could knock down castle walls Fortifications and armor were no longer good protections Early gunpowder was a black powder It was called a low explosive It worked well but it could be dangerous Black powder is still used for signal flares blanks and fireworks But today almost all ammunition is smokeless powder There are over 100 kinds They have different burning rates Different powders work better in different types of guns 6
MEN-OF-WAR In the sixteenth century the English built large warships called men-of-war A man-of-war had many cannons and guns mounted on its deck Gunpowder was used to hurl iron balls at other ships These balls weighed 30 to 50 pounds 13 22 kg The best warship of England’s King Henry VIII had 186 guns By 1900 England had used these ships to win sea battles all over the world Warships could fire a broadside All guns along one side of the ship would fire at once 100 Number of smokeless gunpowders used in weapons today Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese Gunpowder made guns and cannons very powerful Early gunpowder was a black powder Weapons today use smokeless powder 7
