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INVENTIONS OF THE
GREAT WAR
INVENTIONS OF THE
GREAT WAR
BY
A. RUSSELL BOND
Managing Editor of "Scientific American,"
Author of "On the Battle-Front
of Engineering," etc.
WITH MANY
ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1919
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
The Century Co.
Published, June, 1919
PREFACE
The great World War was more than two-thirdsover when America entered the struggle,and yet in a sense this country was in the warfrom its very beginning. Three great inventionscontrolled the character of the fightingand made it different from any other the worldhas ever seen. These three inventions wereAmerican. The submarine was our invention;it carried the war into the sea. The airplanewas an American invention; it carried the warinto the sky. We invented the machine-gun; itdrove the war into the ground.
It is not my purpose to boast of Americangenius but, rather, to show that we entered thewar with heavy responsibilities. The inventionswe had given to the world had been developedmarvelously in other lands. Furthermorethey were in the hands of a determinedand unscrupulous foe, and we found before usthe task of overcoming the very machines thatwe had created. Yankee ingenuity was facedwith a real test.
viThe only way of overcoming the airplane wasto build more and better machines than the enemypossessed. This we tried to do, but firstwe had to be taught by our allies the latest refinementsof this machine, and the war was overbefore we had more than started our aërial program.The machine-gun and its accessory,barbed wire (also an American invention), wereovercome by the tank; and we may find whatlittle comfort we can in the