Argumentative Essay: Innovations During World War II

Innovations during World War II
Conflict, as very few realize, is the birthplace of almost all human creation. The cannon was created and used to fight the Hundred Years War. The telegraph was the first mode of digital communication, created during the civil war. The tank was used to fight the battles of World War One. Yet, no other conflict even compares to that of the Second World War, which consequently provided some of the world’s finest inventions and creations to date.
Responsible for the early computer age, World War II was the first to see both mechanical and digital computers emerge. During the war, simple cyphers were not enough to prevent opposing sides from decrypting messages. Accordingly, World War II saw the first widespread

The infamous machine was, according to Alex Hern, “built around three physical rotors. Each takes in a letter and outputs it as a different one. That letter passes through all three rotors, bounces off a ‘reflector’ at the end, and passes back through all three rotors in the other direction” (Hern). (Add a “this evidence shows” or something The machine played a pivotal role in the early years of the war, until Alan Turing cracked its code. He used intercepted codes to discover the arrangement of the 3 rotors and, with that information, created an algorithm with which he based his mechanical cipher. Considered one of the first mechanical computers the Turing Machine may have been responsible for the war's outcome. Yet, as the war went on and the very first digital messages were being sent, this technology was about to become obsolete just as quickly as it had been created. As digital typewriters, called teleprinters, were used extensively within the Axis powers. The machines, “Changed each keyboard letter or character into 5-bit teleprinter code” (Copeland). Teleprinters were then used in conjunction with an encryption machine called the Tunny which, “masked the message’s

Some of the most powerful weapons ever used were created during this conflict. The electromagnetic spectrum possesses many useful characteristics, a few of which were first utilized during World War II. As William M. Cahill writes, discovered during the early years of the war, Radio Detection and Ranging, or Radar for short, was discovered as a reliable way of detecting enemy movements from a far distance. Consequently, Radar detection was pivotal in the war, reducing any chance of an unexpected attack. However, any new technology will have its weakness and both sides discovered that chunks of tin foil could render early enemy radar useless. Finally, radar’s most innovative use during the war can be found within the proximity fuse. Such fuse only activates a bomb when the radar tracker on it deems that the target has been hit and helped negate the cause for civilian casualties. Yet, no technology created during World War II can be discussed without addressing the Atom Bomb. Capable of the instantaneous destruction of entire cities as well as the eventual contamination of all life by the intense radiation, the Atomic Bomb was not a weapon to be toyed with. The bomb works by employing nuclear fission and releasing the energy created. However, “In order to detonate an atomic weapon, you need a critical mass of fissionable material. This means you need enough U-235 or Pu-239 to ensure that neutrons released by