Technology

The Technologies That Won World War II This timeline shows how six key technologies—penicillin, radar, cryptography, the atomic bomb, the proximity fuze, and Nazi scientists—developed in parallel and ultimately determined the war’s outcome. 13 Years Penicillin Delay 1,600+ Nazi Scientists Recruited 10× Proximity Fuze Improvement $2.5B MIT Radar Research Medicine Radar Cryptography Nuclear Proximity Fuze Operation Paperclip Pre-War Foundations (1928–1938) 1928 Penicillin Discovered by Fleming A contaminated petri dish reveals antibiotics—then gets ignored for 13 years while millions die of infections. ...

Key Takeaways The Breakdown Rate: At Cambrai, 179 of 378 tanks were out of action by the end of Day 1—mostly from mechanical failure, not enemy fire. The Learning Curve: Early tank tactics were catastrophically wrong. Tanks were scattered, unsupported, and sent against impossible terrain. The Institutional Resistance: Cavalry officers saw tanks as a threat to their arm. Artillery officers resented sharing resources. Infantry didn't trust machines. The Haig Problem: The Commander-in-Chief swung from skepticism to over-reliance, never quite understanding what tanks could and couldn't do. The Eventual Success: By 1918, combined arms doctrine finally worked—but only after two years of painful learning. The Machine That Would End War In September 1916, a strange new weapon crawled across the churned mud of the Somme. It was slow, loud, and terrifying. Soldiers on both sides had never seen anything like it. ...

Key Takeaways Artillery was King: Over 60% of WWI casualties came from artillery. It was the dominant weapon of the war. The Registration Problem: Pre-war artillery required "registration"—test shots that revealed your attack was coming. Surprise was impossible. The Solution: "Predicted fire" used math to eliminate registration. You could hit targets without warning. Sound and Flash: New technologies located enemy guns by their sound and muzzle flash, enabling counter-battery fire that silenced the opposition. The Creeping Barrage: Precisely timed artillery support let infantry advance behind a wall of explosions—the tactical innovation that broke the stalemate. The Forgotten Revolution When we think of World War I technology, we think of tanks, aircraft, and poison gas. The dramatic. The novel. The photogenic. ...

Key Takeaways The Gap: Haig was a cavalry officer commanding an army of artillery, tanks, and aircraft. He never fully understood the technologies that won his war. The Oscillation: Haig swung between excessive enthusiasm for new weapons and unrealistic expectations of what they could do. The Delegation: Middle managers (corps commanders) drove real innovation while Haig focused on strategy and politics. The Eventual Adaptation: By 1918, Haig had learned to trust his technical subordinates—and victory followed. The Lesson: Leaders don't need to understand technology in detail. They need to know what they don't know. The Cavalry Officer’s War Douglas Haig was born to command cavalry. He trained for it, excelled at it, and believed in it. When he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in December 1915, he was the finest cavalry officer Britain had produced in a generation. ...

Key Takeaways The Numbers Don't Lie: Radar sank more submarines, shot down more aircraft, and saved more lives than any other WWII technology. The Battle of Britain: Without Chain Home radar, Britain falls in 1940. Without Britain, no D-Day. Without D-Day, no Western front. The Atlantic Gap: Airborne radar closed the "Black Pit" where U-boats had hunted freely. This alone may have decided the war. The Cavity Magnetron: The single most valuable piece of technology transferred to America. Worth more than all other British secrets combined. The Memory Gap: Radar is forgotten because it prevented disasters rather than causing spectacular ones. The Invisible Victory Ask anyone what technology won World War II, and they’ll probably say: the atomic bomb. ...

Key Takeaways The Problem: Anti-aircraft fire was wildly inaccurate. Only 1 in 2,500 shells hit anything. The rest exploded uselessly in empty sky. The Solution: A radio transmitter in a shell that detected nearby aircraft and detonated automatically. Hit rates increased 10x. The Engineering Miracle: Miniature vacuum tubes that could survive 20,000 G forces and then operate with precision. The Secrecy: So classified that for years it was only used over water—to prevent Germans from recovering unexploded shells. The Impact: Changed the Battle of the Bulge, defeated the V-1 flying bombs, and killed more aircraft than pilots realized. The Problem with Anti-Aircraft Fire Imagine trying to shoot a speeding car from a mile away with a rifle. Now imagine the car is flying at 300 mph, in three dimensions, and you have to guess where it will be in 10 seconds when your bullet finally gets there. ...

Key Takeaways The Gamble: Britain, facing invasion, gave away its most advanced secrets to a neutral nation that might never enter the war. The Cargo: One small box contained the cavity magnetron, jet engine designs, nuclear research, and more—worth billions in development costs. The Trust: No formal treaty, no guarantee of return. Britain simply trusted America to use the technology against their common enemy. The Result: American industry produced what British factories couldn't. The technology returned to the battlefield, made in USA. The Lesson: Sometimes the only way to keep something is to give it away. The Most Important Suitcase in History In early September 1940, a British scientific delegation boarded a ship bound for America. They carried a black metal deed box about the size of a small suitcase. ...

Capitalism Unmasked 1 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 1: The Myth of the Free Market 2 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 2: The Shareholder Value Myth 3 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 3: The Trickle-Down Delusion 4 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 4: The Myth of the Lazy Poor 5 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 5: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Distrust 6 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 6: The Education Myth 7 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 7: The Myth of Natural Inequality 8 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 8: The Myth of Capital Flight 9 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 9: The Myth of the Rational Consumer 10 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 10: The Hidden Costs of 'Free' Markets 11 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 11: The Myth of the Self-Made Man 12 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 12: The Myth of Efficient Financial Markets 13 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 13: The Myth of Corporate Social Responsibility 14 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 14: The Myth of Growth 15 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 15: Development Institutions - Help or Hindrance? 16 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 16: The Myth of Immigration Harm 17 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 17: The Myth of Flexible Labor Markets 18 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 18: The Myth of Shareholder Primacy 19 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 19: The Myth of Technological Unemployment 20 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 20: The Privatization Illusion 21 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 21: The Myth of Patent Protection 22 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 22: The Myth of Government Debt Crisis 23 Capitalism Unmasked - Part 23: Finance - Economy's Brain or Parasite? ← Series Home What They Tell You Technology is destroying jobs. Automation, AI, and robots will make human labor obsolete. We’re heading toward mass unemployment. Workers need to upgrade their skills constantly to stay relevant. There’s nothing to be done—technological progress is inevitable and unstoppable. ...

The Secret Life of Ordinary Objects ← Series Home The Serious Business of Play: How Toys, Games, and Tools of Conflict Define Progress Humanity’s energy is often channeled into two seemingly contradictory endeavors: the creation of tools for playful leisure and the relentless pursuit of superior weaponry for conflict. Yet, a closer examination reveals a deep, continuous vein connecting the chessboard to the cannon, and the rattle to the razor. The ingenuity required to develop a complex strategy game is often directly transferable to the demands of war, logistics, and survival. ...

The past is a foreign country, but not because it is distant—because we have misread the maps. We picture the samurai with his sword and Genghis Khan with his horde, but what if a fan was the deadlier weapon, and the conqueror’s true genius was in spreadsheets, not slaughter? The stories we tell about history and science are built on accepted truths, but these truths are often just the surface layer, concealing a world shaped by overlooked forces: battlefield logistics, encoded prejudice, hidden technologies, and profound reinterpretations of character. ...