Thinking of World War I and its “inventions”,
one usually comes up with things like tanks, gas as a weapon or Zeppelins. Yet,
I have never heard of any inventions that were developed in response to the war
and then kept on being further developed and used in a non-war context
afterwards. The aeroplane became a weapon but it also became an important mean
of photography and mapping. It is quite interesting to see that the course of
the war forced people to put more effort into developing new techniques of
photography, when beforehand only some individuals cared about this kind of
progress – “the use of cameras was tolerated, encouraged even, but practice and
experiment continued to be left in the hands of interested individuals.” (Barbour
85) In addition to that, maps of places were created that had been ignored
before (e.g. German East Africa or Mesopotamia). So all in all, this allows us
to see the war from a point of view that I personally haven’t really thought or heard of before.
Despite all the cruelty, there had also been some useful progress.
I totally agree that it is remarkable the kinds of inventions wars can spawn. As they say, "necessity is the mother of invention" and there could not have been a more appropriate time to see and record (gain intelligence) more than in a war. Thinking of intelligence itself as a weapon in wartime leads to a more thoughtful consideration of the use of artistic knowledge in this war. That kind of thinking outside of the box and combining fields of knowledge to breed truly innovative and effective techniques (like reading city structure below as cubist or futurist) speaks to the creative and invention nature of man at war. So many inventions since WWI have come and gone and been combined to create methods of obtaining intelligence contrary to that of the enemy. As much as war is a race of might and firepower, it is also a contest of innovation and wits as evidenced by this weeks study of air crafts and the development of photography.
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