Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The election of Abraham Lincoln in caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate Civil War culture in America—both North and South—was greatly distinct from life in the antebellum years.
Though neither the Union nor the Confederacy had a formal military intelligence network during the Civil War, each side obtained crucial information from spying or espionage operations. From early in the war, the Confederacy set up a spy network in the federal capital of These units had tenuous ties to the regular Confederate and Union Armies and were In many ways, the coming of the Civil War challenged the ideology of Victorian domesticity that had defined the lives of men and women in the antebellum era.
In the North and in the South, the war forced women into public life in ways they could scarcely have imagined a Notable outcomes of the wars included the With icy conditions, slick surfaces and freezing temperatures, technological innovation is especially important for the athletes and organizers of the Winter Olympics.
From an all-weather torch to a souped-up bobsled, check out some of the many inventions the Games have Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Learn NC. NC Department of Cultural Resources. Used in France. Accession no. Model NC Museum of History. Accession No. What were the benefits of using a riffle over any other handheld gun in WW1? Was the production easier or was it the quality of the firearms that caused mass manufacturing?
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Image credits: "Gas Mask. World War I During the First World War, communications—essentially wireless radio—between the chiefs of staff, the command posts, and the front lines could be easily intercepted. There was an urgent need to develop means to prevent essential information and tactical plans from leaking out.
In this context, the neglected science of cryptology, the study of codes and ciphers, became strategically important. The British and the French were pioneers in this relatively new science. At the very beginning of the war, French code-breakers reconstituted the map of the German information networks by repeatedly cracking their codes and ciphers. The convoluted world of secret information services, ciphers, and codes during the First World War is well illustrated by the case of the Zimmermann telegram in What was this famous incident?
To avoid this possibility, which would have seriously compromised a German victory, German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann sought a diversionary strategy to keep the American army busy on other fronts, i.
The plan he came up with was a Mexican invasion of the southern U. This way, the American army would be occupied in defending U. American public opinion shifted, and President Wilson convinced Congress to vote for an official declaration of war against Germany on April 6, In , the first submarine telegraph cable was laid between Dover England and Cap Gris-Nez France , using a German technique developed by Siemens to insulate an electric line in sea water.
The connection was broken when a fishing vessel spotted the cable and dragged it up to the surface, but the challenge was posed and further attempts followed in continuous succession. In , France laid its first trans-Atlantic cable between Brest and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, the French islands off the south coast of Newfoundland. Great Britain, for its part, laid thousands of miles of underwater electric telegraph lines to create an unprecedented worldwide network linking almost all the parts of its empire.
Inaugurated on October 31, , the All Red Line owed its name to the colour that customarily designated the territories of the empire on world political maps. The first trans-Atlantic cable connecting Ireland and Newfoundland in was also subject to frequent breakdowns; the line laid between Valentia Island, Ireland, and Newfoundland in gave less trouble.
Australia was connected in , when the line was extended from Singapore to Darwin, and by , messages could be sent directly from London to Adelaide and Sydney. Australia was linked to New Zealand in The technological progress of this period is reflected in the close historical link between the Great War and the development of photography. In during the Crimean War, a veritable visual revolution occurred when English photographer Roger Fenton spent months in the British army camp.
He was supported by Queen Victoria on condition that his photographs would not show the dead or British soldiers with bloodstains on their uniforms. Not long afterward, Matthew Brady organized the photographic coverage of the American Civil War from to The thousands of pictures taken in this war represent an important moment in the history of photography. In the middle of the 19th century, the French government, aware of the potential of war photography, created a special service within the army.
This institutional recognition of the importance of documentary photography was echoed in several other countries. News photography developed in Germany mainly through the activity of Dr. American reporter Jacob Riis was the first professional journalist to produce true photo reportages towards the end of the 19th century. Technological progress, including the invention of the film roll in , only increased interest in the various uses of photography.
In , the first image for a news report was transmitted by belinograph an early wirephoto process : it was a photograph of the First World War. Considering these developments, the prominent role of photography in chronicling the Great War was inevitable.
As soon as the conflict broke out, the military authorities controlled the taking and dissemination of pictures by regulating the wearing and use of cameras and making it obligatory to obtain official permission to enter the war zones. In France, in the spring of , the ministries of war, foreign affairs, and education and fine arts created the photography section of the army SPA , giving it the well-defined objectives of countering German propaganda in the neutral countries and creating a documentary source for army use, and above all, an archival fonds.
It also functioned to support patriotic discourse and encourage the national war effort. However, the SPA team, originally meant to comprise six professional photographers, only had two. The equipment was heavy, restricting movement and making it difficult to take pictures of combat scenes. The great majority of the official photographs were of the daily routine of soldiers in the trenches between attacks. Soldiers of all the belligerent countries carried their Vest Pocket Kodak cameras to the war and took hundreds of pictures.
Magazines dedicated to current events were still few and far between. The same year, the editor of Le Petit Parisien inaugurated Le Miroir , a weekly photo tabloid that had a circulation of , at the beginning of the war. Along with photographs, a film on the war, The Battle of the Somme , attracted much attention.
This documentary which included some staged scenes was shot by two official British government cameramen, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. Released in London on August 10, , the film showed the British army at the time of the beginning of this monumental battle. Its objective was to give the public an idea of trench warfare and the activities of the infantry.
It captured images of the shelling of German positions, British troops waiting for the signal to attack, medical treatment of wounded British and German soldiers, British and German dead, and German equipment and positions. The film was a great success: 20 million British men and women flocked to see it during the first six months after its premiere, and it was subsequently distributed in 18 other countries. The first machine guns appear. Ericsson subsequently spends many years experimenting with solar power.
Unlike any previous submarine it has a streamlined shape. However, the rebels are unreliable employers and Holland leaves them in disgust. The sub is never used in anger. Hiram Stevens Maxim produces the first fully automatic machine gun: the Maxim gun. In later life, crippled by bronchitis, he develops an early inhaler. It is made largely from woven silk and works, but still fails to take off.
Robert Oppenheimer. The first successful test of a nuclear bomb is carried out in New Mexico, on 16 July. On 6 and 9 August, bombs are dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively ending the second world war and ushering in a new age of nuclear weaponry.
They use X-rays from a nuclear fission explosion to trigger nuclear fusion reactions between atoms of the hydrogen isotope tritium, like those that take place inside the sun.
It produces a tight beam of microwaves. The laser Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation is demonstrated for the first time. It produces a beam of red light.
Lasers find a myriad of uses in society, and in warfare are used for targeting of missiles and other weapons, and as an alternative to radar.
Various prototype laser weapons are under development. The Soviet Union begins developing a supercavitating torpedo in the s.
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