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Made nearly two million years ago, stone tools such as this are the first known technological invention. This chopping tool and others like it are the oldest objects in the British Museum. It comes from an early human campsite in the bottom layer of deposits in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

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The concept of underwater combat has roots deep in antiquity. There are images of men using hollow sticks to breathe underwater for hunting at the temples at Thebes, but the first known military use occurred during the siege of Syracuse (415-413 BC), where divers cleared obstructions, according to the History of the Peloponnesian War. At the siege of Tyre (332 BC), Alexander the Great used divers, according to Aristotle. Later legends from Alexandria, Egypt from the 12th century AD, suggested that Alexander conducted reconnaissance, using a primitive submersible in the form of a diving bell, as depicted in a 16th-century Islamic painting.

According to a report attributed to Tahbir al-Tayseer in Opusculum Taisnieri published in 1562:

two Greeks submerged and surfaced in the river Tagus near the City of Toledo several times in the presence of The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, without getting wet and with the flame they carried in their hands still alight.

Although there were various plans for submersibles or submarines during the Middle Ages, the Englishman William Bourne designed one of the first prototype submarines in 1578. This was to be a completely enclosed boat that could be submerged and rowed beneath the surface. Comprising a completely enclosed wooden vessel sheathed in waterproofed leather, it was to be submerged by using hand-operated wooden screw thread adjustable plungers pressing against flexible leather bags located at the sides in order to increase or decrease the volume of water to adjust the buoyancy of the craft. The sketch (left) suggests that the depth adjustment was by means of a crankset projecting above the surface. There is no obvious accommodation for crew. In 1596 the Scottish mathematician and theologian John Napier wrote in his Secret Inventions the following: "These inventions besides devises of sayling under water with divers, other devises and strategems for harming of the enemyes by the Grace of God and worke of expert Craftsmen I hope to perform." It's unclear whether or not Napier ever carried out his plans. Henry Briggs, who was professor of mathematics at Gresham College, London, and later at Oxford, was a friend of Napier, whom he visited in 1615 and 1616, and was also an acquaintance of Cornelius Van Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I of England, who designed and built the first successful submarine in 1620. Hence, it is not impossible that it was because of the interest taken by Napier in the submarine that Briggs came in touch with Drebbel.

Drebbel's submarine was propelled by oars. The precise nature of this submarine is unclear, it may be possible that it resembled a bell towed by a boat. Two improved types were tested in the River Thames between 1620 and 1624. Of one of these tests Constantijn Huygens reports in his autobiography of 1651 the following:

Worth all the rest put together is the little ship, in which he calmly dived under the water, while he kept the king and several thousand Londoners in the greatest suspense. The great majority of these already thought that the man who had very cleverly remained invisible to them - for three hours, as rumour has it - had perished, when he suddenly rose to the surface a considerable distance from where he had dived down, bringing with him the several companions of his dangerous adventure to witness to the fact that they had experienced no trouble or fear under the water, but had sat on the bottom, when they so desired, and had ascended when they wished to do so; that they had sailed whithersoever they had a mind, rising as much nearer the surface or again diving as much deeper as it pleased them to do, without even being deprived of light; yea, even that they had done in the belly of that whale all the things people are used to do in the air, and this without any trouble. From all this it is not hard to imagine what would be the usefulness of this bold invention in time of war, if in this manner (a thing which I have repeatedly heard Drebbel assert) enemy ships lying safely at anchor could be secretly attacked and sunk unexpectedly by means of a battering ram - an instrument of which hideous use is made now- a-days in the capturing of the gates and bridges of towns.

His son Constantijn Huygens, Jr. commented in his diary on October 18, 1690, on how Drebbel was able to measure the depth to which his boat had descended (which was necessary to prevent the boat from sinking) by means of a quicksilver barometer:

Old Mistress Kuffler came to see me in the morning. She was still talking about a place at court or elsewhere; I said I could not help her. She said that her father Cornelis Drebbel had a long tube of quicksilver in the boat in which he dived be under water.

In order to solve the problem of the absence of oxygen, Drebbel was able to create oxygen out of saltpetre to refresh the air in his submarine. An indication of this can be found in Drebbel's own work: On the Nature of the Elements (1604), in the fifth chapter:

Very dry, subtle or warm air, which then very quickly penetrates the coarse, heavy clouds, expands them, makes them subtle and thin, and again changes them into the nature of air, whereby its volume is increased an hundredfold in a moment, which brings forth the terrific motion which, cracking and bursting, sets the air alight and moves it, until volume and density are equal, when there is rest. Thus is the body of the saltpetre broken up and decomposed by the power of the fire and so changed in the nature of the air, or as when a wet hand or cloth is waved about on a hot iron, or molten lead, which by expansion or enlargement due to heat cracks and bursts with a noise like thunder.

The introduction of Drebbel's submarine concept seemed beyond conventional expectations of what science was thought to have been capable of at the time. Commenting on the scientific basis of Drebbel's claims, renowned German astronomer Johannes Kepler was said to have remarked in 1607: "If [Drebbel] can create a new spirit, by means of which he can move and keep in motion his instrument without weights or propelling power, he will be Apollo in my opinion."

Although the first submersible vehicles were tools for exploring under water, it did not take long for inventors to recognize their military potential. The strategic advantages of submarines were first set out by Bishop John Wilkins of Chester in Mathematical Magick in 1648:

By the mid 18th century, over a dozen patents for submarines/submersible boats had been granted in England. In 1747, Nathaniel Symons patented and built the first known working example of the use of a ballast tank for submersion. His design used leather bags that could fill with water to submerge the craft. A mechanism was used to twist the water out of the bags and cause the boat to resurface. In 1749, the Gentlemen's Magazine reported that a similar design had been proposed by Giovanni Borelli in 1680. By this point of development, further improvement in design stagnated for over a century, until new industrial technologies for propulsion and stability could be applied.

The carpenter Yefim Nikonov built the first military submarine in 1720 by order of Tsar Peter the Great in Russia. Nikonov armed his submarine with "fire tubes", weapons akin to flame-throwers. The submarine was designed to approach an enemy vessel, put the ends of the "tubes" out of the water, and blow up the ship with a combustible mixture. In addition, Nikonov designed an airlock for aquanauts to come out of the submarine and to destroy the bilge of the ship. With the death of Peter I in January 1725 Nikonov lost his principal patron and the Admiralty withdrew support for the project.

The first American military submarine was Turtle in 1776, a hand-powered egg-shaped (or acorn-shaped) device designed by the American David Bushnell, to accommodate a single man. It was the first submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion. However, according to British naval historian Richard Compton-Hall, the problems of achieving neutral buoyancy would have rendered the vertical propeller of the Turtle useless. The route that Turtle had to take to attack its intended target, HMS Eagle, was slightly across the tidal stream which would, in all probability, have resulted in Ezra Lee becoming exhausted. There are also no British records of an attack by a submarine during the war. In the face of these and other problems, Compton-Hall suggests that the entire story around the Turtle was fabricated as disinformation and morale-boosting propaganda, and that if Ezra Lee did carry out an attack, it was in a covered rowing boat rather than in Turtle. Replicas of Turtle have been built to test the design. One replica ( Acorn), constructed by Duke Riley and Jesse Bushnell (claiming to be a descendant of David Bushnell), used the tide to get within 200 feet of the RMS Queen Mary 2 in New York City (a police boat stopped Acorn for violating a security zone). Displays of replicas of Turtle which acknowledge its place in history appear in the Connecticut River Museum, the U.S. Navy's Submarine Force Library and Museum, Britain's Royal Navy Submarine Museum and Monaco's Oceanographic Museum.

In 1800, the French Navy built a human-powered submarine designed by Robert Fulton, the Nautilus. It also had a sail for use on the surface and so exhibited the first known use of dual propulsion on a submarine. It proved capable of using mines to destroy two warships during demonstrations. The French eventually gave up on the experiment in 1804, as did the British, when Fulton later offered them the submarine design.

In 1834 the Russian Army General Karl Andreevich Shilder demonstrated the first rocket-equipped submarine to Emperor Nicholas I.

The Submarino Hipopótamo, the first submarine built in South America, underwent testing in Ecuador on September 18, 1837. Its designer, Jose Rodriguez Lavandera, successfully crossed the Guayas River in Guayaquil accompanied by Jose Quevedo. Rodriguez Lavandera had enrolled in the Ecuadorian Navy in 1823, becoming a Lieutenant by 1830. The Hipopotamo crossed the Guayas on two more occasions, but it was abandoned because of lack of funding and interest from the government.

In 1851 a Bavarian artillery corporal, Wilhelm Bauer, took a submarine designed by him called the Brandtaucher (fire-diver) to sea in Kiel Harbour. Built by August Howaldt and powered by a treadwheel, Brandtaucher sank, but the crew of three managed to escape.

During the American Civil War both sides made use of submarines. Examples were the Alligator, for the Union, and the Hunley, for the Confederacy. The Hunley was the first submarine to successfully attack and sink an opposing warship. (see below)

In 1863 the Sub Marine Explorer was built by the German American engineer Julius H. Kroehl, and featured a pressurized work chamber for the crew to exit and enter underwater. This pre-figured modern diving arrangements such as the lock-out dive chamber, though the problems of decompression sickness were not well understood at the time. After its public maiden dive in 1866, the Sub Marine Explorer was used for pearl diving off the coast of Panama. It was capable of diving deeper than 31 meters (103 feet), deeper than any other submarine built before.

The Chilean government commissioned the Flach in 1865, during the Chincha Islands War (1864-1866) when Chile and Peru fought against Spain. Built by the German engineer Karl Flach, the submarine sank during tests in Valparaiso Bay on May 3, 1866, with the entire eleven-man crew.

During the War of the Pacific in 1879, the Peruvian government commissioned and built a submarine, the Toro Submarino. It never saw military action and was scuttled after Peru's defeat to prevent its capture by the enemy.

The first submarine that did not rely on human power for propulsion was the French Navy submarine , launched in 1863, and equipped with a reciprocating engine using compressed air from 23 tanks at 180 psi. In practice, the submarine was virtually unmanageable underwater, with very poor speed and maneouverability.

The first air independent and combustion powered submarine was the Spanish , designed by the Spanish engineer from Narciso Monturiol. Originally launched in 1864 as a human-powered vessel, propelled by 16 men, it was converted to peroxide propulsion and steam in 1867. The 14 meters (46 feet) craft was designed for a crew of two, could dive to 30 metres (98 feet), and demonstrated dives of two hours. On the surface, it ran on a steam engine, but underwater such an engine would quickly consume the submarine's oxygen. To solve this problem, Monturiol invented an air-independent propulsion system. As the air-independent power system drove the screw, the chemical process driving it also released oxygen into the hull for the crew and an auxiliary steam engine. Apart from being mechanically powered, Monturiol's pioneering double hulled vessels also solved pressure, buoyancy, stability, diving and ascending problems that had bedeviled earlier designs.

The submarine became a potentially viable weapon with the development of the first practical self-propelled torpedoes. The Whitehead torpedo was the first such weapon, and was designed in 1866 by British engineer Robert Whitehead. His 'mine ship' was an 11-foot long, 14-inch diameter torpedo propelled by compressed air and carried an explosive warhead. The device had a speed of 7 knots (13 km/h) and could hit a target 700 yards (640 m) away. Many naval services procured the Whitehead torpedo during the 1870s and it first proved itself in combat during the Russo-Turkish War when, on January 16, 1878, the Turkish ship Intibah was sunk by Russian torpedo boats carrying Whiteheads.

In 1878, Garrett built a 14-foot (4.3 m) long hand-cranked submarine of about 4.5 tons, which he named the . This was followed by the second (and more famous) of 1879, built by Cochran & Co. at Birkenhead, England. The construction was of iron plates fastened to iron frames, with the central section of the vessel clad with wood secured by iron straps. As built, it was 45 feet (14 m) long by 10 feet (3.0 m) in diameter, weighed 30 long tons (30 t), and had a crew of 3. was powered by a closed cycle steam engine, which provided enough steam to turn the single propeller for up to 4 hours. It was designed to have positive buoyancy, and diving was controlled by a pair of hydroplanes amidships. At the time it cost £1,538.

Although his design was not very practical - the steam boiler generated intense heat in the cramped confines of the vessel, and it lacked longitudinal stability - it caught the attention of the Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt. Discussions between the two led to the first practical steam-powered submarines, armed with torpedoes and ready for military use.

The first such boat was the Nordenfelt I, a 56 tonne, 19.5 metres (64 feet) vessel similar to Garret's ill-fated , with a range of 240 kilometres (150 miles; 130 nautical miles), armed with a single torpedo, in 1885. Like Resurgam, Nordenfelt I operated on the surface by steam, then shut down its engine to dive. While submerged the submarine released pressure generated when the engine was running on the surface to provide propulsion for some distance underwater. Greece, fearful of the return of the Ottomans, purchased it. Nordenfelt commissioned the Barrow Shipyard in England in 1886 to build Nordenfelt II (Abdül Hamid) and Nordenfelt III ( Abdül Mecid) in 1887. They were powered by a coal-fired 250 hp Lamm steam engine turning a single screw, and carried two 356mm torpedo tubes and two 35mm machine guns. They were loaded with a total of 8 tons of coal as fuel and could dive to a depth of 160 feet. It was 30.5m long and 6m wide, and weighed 100 tons. It carried a normal crew of 7. It had a maximum surface speed of 6 knots, and a maximum speed of 4 knots while submerged. Abdülhamid became the first submarine in history to fire a torpedo submerged.

Nordenfelt's efforts culminated in 1887 with Nordenfelt IV, which had twin motors and twin torpedoes. It was sold to the Russians, but soon ran aground and was scrapped. Garrett and Nordenfelt made significant advances in constructing the first modern, militarily capable submarines and fired up military and popular interest around the world for this new technology. However, the solution to fundamental technical problems, such as propulsion, quick submergence, and the maintenance of balance underwater was still lacking, and would only be solved in the 1890s.

In 1884, Drzewiecki converted 2 mechanical submarines, installed on each a 1 hp engine with the new, at the time, source of energy - batteries. On tests submarine went under the water against the flow of the Neva River at a rate of 4 knots. It was the first submarine in the world with electric propulsion. Ash and Campbell constructed their craft, the Nautilus, in 1886. It was 60 feet (18 m) long with a 9.7 kW (13 hp) engine powered by 52 batteries. It was an advanced design for the time, but became stuck in the mud during trials and was discontinued. Waddington's Porpoise vessel showed more promise. Waddington had formerly worked in the shipyard in which Garrett had been active. Waddington's vessel was similar in size to the and its propulsion system used 45 accumulator cells with a capacity of 660 ampere hours each. These were coupled in series to a motor driving a propeller at about 750 rpm, giving the ship a sustained speed of 13 km/h (8 mph) for at least 8 hours. The boat was armed with two externally mounted torpedoes as well as a mine torpedo that could be detonated electronically. Although the boat performed well at trials, Waddington was unable to attract further contracts and went bankrupt.

In France, early electric boats Goubet I and Goubet II were built by the civil engineer, Claude Goubet. These boats were also unsuccessful, but they inspired the renowned naval architect Dupuy de Lôme to begin work on his submarine - an advanced electric-powered submarine almost 20 metres long. He didn't live to see his design constructed, but the craft was completed by Gustave Zédé in 1888 and named the Gymnote. It was one of the first truly successful electrically powered submarines, and was equipped with an early periscope and an electric gyrocompass for navigation. It completed over 2,000 successful dives using a 204-cell battery. Although the Gymnote was scrapped for its limited range, its side hydroplanes became the standard for future submarine designs.

The Peral Submarine, constructed by Isaac Peral, was launched by the Spanish Navy in the same year, 1888. It had three Schwarzkopf torpedoes 14 in (360 mm) and one torpedo tube in bow, new air systems, hull shape, propeller, and cruciform external controls anticipating much later designs. Peral was an all-electrical powered submarine with and underwater speed of 3 kn (5.6 km/h; 3.5 mph). After two years of trials the project was scrapped by naval officialdom who cited, among other reasons, concerns over the range permitted by its batteries.

Many more designs were built at this time by various inventors, but submarines were not put into service by navies until the turn of the 20th century.

The turn of century marked a pivotal time in the development of submarines, with a number of important technologies making their debut, as well as the widespread adoption and fielding of submarines by a number of nations. Diesel electric propulsion would become the dominant power system and instruments such as the periscope would become standardized. Batteries were used for running underwater and gasoline (petrol) or diesel engines were used on the surface and to recharge the batteries. Early boats used gasoline, but quickly gave way to kerosene, then diesel, because of reduced flammability. Effective tactics and weaponry were refined in the early part of the century, and the submarine would have a large impact on 20th century warfare.

The Irish inventor John Philip Holland built a model submarine in 1876 and a full scale one in 1878, followed by a number of unsuccessful ones. In 1896, he designed the Holland Type VI submarine. This vessel made use of internal combustion engine power on the surface and electric battery power for submerged operations. Launched on 17 May 1897 at Navy Lt. Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the Holland VI was purchased by the United States Navy on 11 April 1900, becoming the United States Navy's first commissioned submarine and renamed USS Holland.

A prototype version of the A-class submarine ( Fulton) was developed at Crescent Shipyard under the supervision of naval architect and shipbuilder from the United Kingdom, Arthur Leopold Busch, for the newly reorganized Electric Boat Company in 1900. The Fulton was never commissioned by the United States Navy and was sold to the Imperial Russian Navy in 1905. The submarines were built at two different shipyards on both coasts of the United States. In 1902, Holland received U.S. Patent 708,553 for his relentless pursuit to perfect the modern submarine craft. Many countries became interested in Holland's (weapons) product and purchased "the rights" to build them during this time.

Meanwhile, the French steam and electric was commissioned in June 1900 and introduced the classic double-hull design, with a pressure hull inside the outer shell. These 200-ton ships had a range of over 100 miles (160 km) underwater. The French submarine Aigrette in 1904 further improved the concept by using a diesel rather than a gasoline engine for surface power. Large numbers of these submarines were built, with seventy-six completed before 1914.

By 1914 all the main powers had submarine fleets, though the development of a strategy for their use lay in the future.

At the start of World War One, the Royal Navy had the world's largest submarine service by a considerable margin, with 74 boats of the B, C and D classes, of which 15 were oceangoing, with the rest capable of coastal patrols. The D-class, built 1907-1910, were designed to be propelled by diesel motors on the surface to avoid the problems with petrol engines experienced with the A class. These boats were designed for foreign service with an endurance of 2500 nmi at 10 knots on the surface and much-improved living conditions for a larger crew. They were fitted with twin screws for greater manoeuvrability and with innovative saddle tanks. They were also the first submarines to be equipped with deck guns forward of the conning tower. Armament also included three 18-inch torpedo tubes (2 vertically in the bow and 1 in the stern). D class was also the first class of submarine to be equipped with standard wireless transmitters. The aerial was attached to the mast of the conning tower that was lowered before diving. With their enlarged bridge structure, the boat profile was recognisably that of the modern submarine. The D Class submarines were considered to be so innovative that the prototype D1 was built in utmost secrecy in a securely guarded building shed.

The British also experimented with other power sources. Oil-fired steam turbines powered the British "K" class submarines built during the First World War and in following years, but these were not very successful. The aim was to give them the necessary surface speed to keep up with the British battle fleet.

The Germans were slower to recognize the importance of this new weapon. A submersible was initially ordered by the Imperial Russian Navy from the Kiel shipyard in 1904, but cancelled after the Russo-Japanese War ended. One example was modified and improved, then commissioned into the Imperial German Navy in 1906 as its first U-boat, U-1. It had a double hull, was powered by a Körting kerosene engine and was armed with a single torpedo tube. The fifty percent larger SM U-2 had two torpedo tubes. A diesel engine was not installed in a German navy boat until the U-19 class of 1912-13. At the start of World War I, Germany had 20 submarines of 13 classes in service with more under construction.

Diesel submarines needed air to run their engines, and so carried very large batteries for submerged travel. These limited the speed and range of the submarines while submerged.

An early submarine snorkel was designed by James Richardson, an assistant manager at Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock, Scotland, as early as 1916. The snorkel allowed the submarine to avoid detection for long periods by travelling under the water using non-electric powered propulsion. Although the company received a British Patent for the design, no further use was made of it-the British Admiralty did not accept it for use in Royal Navy submarines.

The first German U-boat to be fitted with a snorkel was U-58, which experimented with the equipment in the Baltic Sea during the summer of 1943. The technology was based on pre-war Dutch experiments with a device named a snuiver ( sniffer). As early as 1938, a simple pipe system was installed on the submarines O-19 and O-20 that enabled them to travel at periscope depth operating on its diesels with almost unlimited underwater range while charging the propulsion batteries. U-boats began to use it operationally in early 1944. By June 1944, about half of the boats stationed in the French bases were fitted with snorkels.

Various new submarine designs were developed during the interwar years. Among the most notable were submarine aircraft carriers, equipped with a waterproof hangar and steam catapult to launch and recover one or more small seaplanes. The submarine and its plane could then act as a reconnaissance unit ahead of the fleet, an essential role at a time when radar was not available. The first example was the British HMS M2, followed by the French Surcouf, and numerous aircraft-carrying submarines in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

An early form of anaerobic propulsion had already been employed by the Ictineo II in 1864. The engine used a chemical mix containing a peroxide compound, which generated heat for steam propulsion while at the same time solved the problem of oxygen renovation in an hermetic container for breathing purposes. This system wasn't employed again until 1940 when the German Navy tested a system employing the same principles, the Walter turbine, on the experimental V-80 submarine and later on the naval U-791 submarine.

At the end of the Second World War, the British and Russians experimented with hydrogen peroxide/ kerosene (paraffin) engines, which could be used both above and below the surface. The results were not encouraging enough for this technique to be adopted at the time, although the Russians deployed a class of submarines with this engine type code named Quebec by NATO. They were considered a failure. Today, several navies, notably Sweden, use air-independent propulsion boats, which substitute liquid oxygen for hydrogen peroxide.

For further information on nuclear powered submarines, see Nuclear submarine.

The first launch of a cruise missile ( SSM-N-8 Regulus) from a submarine occurred in July 1953 from the deck of USS Tunny (SSG-282), a World War II fleet boat modified to carry this missile with a nuclear warhead. Tunny and her sister boat USS Barbero (SSG-317) were the United States's first nuclear deterrent patrol submarines. They were joined in 1958 by two purpose-built Regulus submarines, USS Grayback (SSG-574), USS Growler (SSG-577), and, later, by the nuclear-powered USS Halibut (SSGN-587). So that no target would be left uncovered, four Regulus missiles had to be at sea at any given time. Thus, Barbero and Tunny, each of which carried two Regulus missiles, patrolled simultaneously. Growler and Grayback, with four missiles, or Halibut, with five, could patrol alone. These five submarines made 40 Regulus strategic deterrent patrols between October 1959 and July 1964. They were replaced by the introduction of a greatly superior system beginning in 1961: the Polaris missile launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines ( SSBNs). The Soviet Navy developed submarine-launched ballistic missiles launched from conventional submarines a few years before the US, and paralleled subsequent US development in this area.

In the 1950s, nuclear power partially replaced diesel-electric propulsion. The sailing of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USN "Nautilus" in 1955 was soon followed by similar British, French and Russian boats. Equipment was also developed to extract oxygen from sea water. These two innovations, together with inertial navigation systems, gave submarines the ability to remain submerged for weeks or months, and enabled previously impossible voyages such as the crossing of the North Pole beneath the Arctic ice cap by the USS Nautilus in 1958. Most of the naval submarines built since that time in the United States and the Soviet Union and its successor state the Russian Federation have been powered by nuclear reactors. The limiting factors in submerged endurance for these vessels are food supply and crew morale in the space-limited submarine.

The Soviet Navy attempted to use a very advanced lead cooled fast reactor on Project 705 "Lira" (NATO Alfa-class) beginning in the 1970s, but its maintenance was considered too expensive, and only six submarines of this class were completed. By removing the requirement for atmospheric oxygen all nuclear-powered submarines can stay submerged indefinitely so long as food supplies remain (air is recycled and fresh water distilled from seawater). These vessels always have a small battery and diesel generator installation for emergency use when the reactors have to be shut down.

While the greater endurance and performance of nuclear reactors mean that nuclear submarines are better for long distance missions or the protection of a carrier battle-force, both nuclear and non-nuclear powers continue produce conventional diesel-electric submarines, because they can be made stealthier, except when required to run the diesel engine to recharge the ship's battery. Technological advances in sound dampening, noise isolation and cancellation have substantially eroded this advantage. Though far less capable regarding speed and weapons payload, conventional submarines are also cheaper to build. The introduction of air-independent propulsion boats led to increased sales numbers of such types of submarines.

In 1958 the USN carried out a series of trials with the USS Albacore. Various hull and control configurations were tested to reduce drag and so allow greater underwater speed and maneuverability. The results of these trials were incorporated into the Skipjack class and later submarines. From the same era is the first SSBN, the USS George Washington.

Most small modern commercial submarines, that are not expected to operate independently, use batteries that can be recharged by a mother-ship after every dive.

Towards the end of the 20th century, some submarines were fitted with pump-jet propulsors, instead of propellers. Although these are heavier, more expensive, and often less efficient than a propeller, they are significantly quieter, giving an important tactical advantage.

A possible propulsion system for submarines is the magnetohydrodynamic drive, or "caterpillar drive", which has no moving parts. It was popularized in the movie version of The Hunt for Red October, written by Tom Clancy, which portrayed it as a virtually silent system. (In the book, a form of propulsor was used rather than an MHD.) Although some experimental surface ships have been built with this propulsion system, speeds have not been as high as hoped. In addition, the noise created by bubbles, and the higher power settings a submarine's reactor would need, mean that it is unlikely to be considered for any military purpose.

The first submarines had only a porthole to provide a view to aid navigation. An early periscope was patented by Simon Lake in 1893. The modern periscope was developed by the industrialist Sir Howard Grubb in the early 20th century and was fitted onto most Royal Navy designs.

Passive sonar was introduced in submarines during the First World War, but active sonar ASDIC did not come into service until the inter-war period. Today, the submarine may have a wide variety of sonar arrays, from bow mounted to trailing ones. There are often upward-looking under-ice sonars as well as depth sounders.

Early experiments with the use of sound to 'echo locate' underwater in the same way as bats use sound for aerial navigation began in the late 19th century. The first patent for an underwater echo ranging device was filed by English meteorologist Lewis Richardson a month after the sinking of the Titanic. The First World War stimulated research in this area. The British made early use of underwater hydrophones, while the French physicist Paul Langevin worked on the development of active sound devices for detecting submarines in 1915 using quartz. In 1916, under the British Board of Invention and Research, Canadian physicist Robert William Boyle took on the active sound detection project with A B Wood, producing a prototype for testing in mid-1917. This work, for the Anti-Submarine Division of the British Naval Staff, was undertaken in utmost secrecy, and used quartz piezoelectric crystals to produce the world's first practical underwater active sound detection apparatus.

By 1918, both France and Britain had built prototype active systems. The British tested their ASDIC on HMS Antrim in 1920, and started production in 1922. The 6th Destroyer Flotilla had ASDIC-equipped vessels in 1923. An anti-submarine school, HMS Osprey, and a training flotilla of four vessels were established on Portland in 1924. The US Sonar QB set arrived in 1931.

Early submarines carried torpedoes mounted externally to the craft. Later designs incorporated the weapons into the internal structure of the submarine. Originally, both bow-mounted and stern-mounted tubes were used, but the latter eventually fell out of favour. Today, only bow-mounted installations are employed. The modern submarine is capable of firing many types of weapon from its launch tubes, including UAVs. Special mine laying submarines were also built. Up until the end of the Second World War, it was common to fit deck guns to submarines to allow them to sink ships without wasting their limited numbers of torpedoes.

To aid in the weapons targeting mechanical calculators were employed to improve the fire control of the on-board weaponry. The firing calculus was determined by the targets' course and speed through measurements of the angle and its range via the periscope. Today, these calculations are achieved by digital computers with display screens providing necessary information on the torpedo status and ship status.

German submarines in World War II had rubber coatings and could launch chemical devices to provide a decoy when the boat came under attack. These proved to be ineffective, as sonar operators learned to distinguish between the decoy and the submarine. Modern submarines can launch a variety of devices for the same purpose.

After the sinking of the submarine in 1904, lifting eyes were fitted to British submarines and in 1908 air-locks and escape helmets were provided. The RN experimented with various types of escape apparatus, but it was not until 1924 that the " Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus" was developed for crew members. The USN used the similar " Momsen Lung". The French used "Joubert's apparatus" and the Germans used "Draeger's apparatus".

Rescue submarines for evacuating a disabled submarine's crew were developed in the 1970s. A British unmanned vehicle was used for recovering an entangled Russian submarine crew in 2005. A new NATO Submarine Rescue System entered service in 2007.

Wireless was used to provide communication to and from submarines in the First World War. The D-class submarine was the first submarine class to be fitted with wireless transmitters in 1907. With time the type, range and bandwidth of the communications systems have increased. With the danger of intercept, transmissions by a submarine are minimised. Various periscope-mounted aerials have been developed to allow communication without surfacing.

The first military submarine was Turtle in 1776. During the American Revolutionary War, Turtle (operated by Sgt. Ezra Lee, Continental Army) tried and failed to sink a British warship, HMS Eagle (flagship of the blockaders) in New York harbor on September 7, 1776. There is no record of any attack in the ships' logs.

During the American Civil War, the Union was the first to field a submarine. The French-designed Alligator was the first U.S. Navy sub and the first to feature compressed air (for air supply) and an air filtration system. It was the first submarine to carry a diver lock, which allowed a diver to plant electrically detonated mines on enemy ships. Initially hand-powered by oars, it was converted after 6 months to a screw propeller powered by a hand crank. With a crew of 20, it was larger than Confederate submarines. Alligator was 47 feet (14 m) long and about 4 feet (1.2 m) in diameter. It was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras on April 1, 1863, while uncrewed and under tow to its first combat deployment at Charleston.

The Intelligent Whale was built by Oliver Halstead and tested by the U.S. Navy after the American Civil War and caused the deaths of 39 men during trials.

The Confederate States of America fielded several human-powered submarines, including CSS H. L. Hunley (named for its designer and chief financier, Horace Lawson Hunley). The first Confederate submarine was the 30-foot-long (9.1 m) , which sank a target schooner using a towed mine during tests on Lake Pontchartrain, but it was not used in combat. It was scuttled after New Orleans was captured and in 1868 was sold for scrap. The similar Bayou St. John submarine is preserved in the Louisiana State Museum. CSS Hunley was intended for attacking Union ships that were blockading Confederate seaports. The submarine had a long pole with an explosive charge in the bow, called a spar torpedo. The sub had to approach an enemy vessel, attach the explosive, move away, and then detonate it. It was extremely hazardous to operate, and had no air supply other than what was contained inside the main compartment. On two occasions, the sub sank; on the first occasion half the crew died, and on the second, the entire eight-man crew (including Hunley himself) drowned. On February 17, 1864, Hunley sank USS Housatonic off the Charleston Harbor, the first time a submarine successfully sank another ship, though it sank in the same engagement shortly after signaling its success. Submarines did not have a major impact on the outcome of the war, but did portend their coming importance to naval warfare and increased interest in their use in naval warfare.

On 14 June 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) placed an order for five Holland Type VII submersibles, which were built in Quincy, Massachusetts, at the Fore River Yard, and shipped to Yokohama, Japan in sections. The five machines arrived on 12 December 1904. Under the supervision of naval architect Arthur L. Busch, the imported Hollands were re-assembled, and the first submersibles were ready for combat operations by August 1905, but hostilities were nearing the end by that date, and no submarines saw action during the war.

Meanwhile, the Imperial Russian Navy (IRN) purchased German constructed submersibles built by the Germaniawerft shipyards out of Kiel. In 1903 Germany successfully completed its first fully functional engine-powered submarine, Forelle (Trout), It was sold to Russia in 1904 and shipped via the Trans-Siberian Railway to the combat zone during the Russo-Japanese War.

Due to the naval blockade of Port Arthur, Russia sent their remaining submarines to Vladivostok, and by the end of 1904, seven subs were based there. On 1 January 1905, the IRN created the world's first operational submarine fleet around these seven submarines. The first combat patrol by the newly created IRN submarine fleet occurred on 14 February 1905, and was carried out by Delfin and Som, with each patrol normally lasting about 24 hours. Som first made contact with the enemy on 29 April, when it was fired upon by IJN torpedo boats, which withdrew shortly after opening fire and resulting in no casualties or damage to either combatant. A second contact occurred on 1 July 1905 in the Tartar Strait when two IJN torpedo boats spotted the IRN sub Keta. Unable to submerge quickly enough, Keta was unable to obtain a proper firing position, and both combatants broke contact.

The first time military submarines had significant impact on a war was in World War I. Forces such as the U-boats of Germany operated against Allied commerce (Handelskrieg). The submarine's ability to function as a practical war machine relied on new tactics, their numbers, and submarine technologies such as combination diesel/ electric power system that had been developed in the preceding years. More like submersible ships than the submarines of today, submarines operated primarily on the surface using standard engines, submerging occasionally to attack under battery power. They were roughly triangular in cross-section, with a distinct keel, to control rolling while surfaced, and a distinct bow.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, submarines were employed by the Italian Regia Marina during the Italo-Turkish War without seeing any naval action, and by the Greek Navy during the Balkan Wars, where notably the French-built Delfin became the first such vessel to launch a torpedo against an enemy ship (albeit unsuccessfully).

At the start of the war, Germany had 48 submarines in service or under construction, with 29 operational. These included vessels of the diesel-engined U-19 class with the range (5,000 miles) and speed (eight knots) to operate effectively around the entire British coast. Initially, Germany followed the international "Prize Rules", which required a ship's crew to be allowed to leave before sinking their ship. The U-boats saw action in the First Battle of the Atlantic.

After the British ordered transport ships to act as auxiliary cruisers, the German navy adopted unrestricted submarine warfare; generally giving no warning of an attack. During the war, 360 submarines were built, but 178 were lost. The rest were surrendered at the end of the war. A German U-boat sunk RMS Lusitania and is often cited among the reasons for the entry of the United States into the war.

In August 1914, a flotilla of ten U-boats sailed from their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea in the first submarine war patrol in history. Their aim was to sink capital ships of the British Grand Fleet, and so reduce the Grand Fleet's numerical superiority over the German High Seas Fleet. Depending more on luck than strategy, the first sortie was not a success. Only one attack was carried out, when U-15 fired a torpedo (which missed) at HMS Monarch, while two of the ten U-boats were lost. The SM U-9 had better luck. On 22 September 1914 while patrolling the Broad Fourteens, a region of the southern North Sea, U-9 found three obsolescent British Cressy-class armoured cruisers ( HMS Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy), which were assigned to prevent German surface vessels from entering the eastern end of the English Channel. The U-9 fired all six of its torpedoes, reloading while submerged, and sank the three cruisers in less than an hour.

The British had 77 operational submarines at the beginning of the war, with 15 under construction. The main type was the " E class", but several experimental designs were built, including the " K class", which had a reputation for bad luck, and the " M class", which had a large deck-mounted gun. The " R class" was the first boat designed to attack other submarines. British submarines operated in the Baltic, North Sea and Atlantic, as well as in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Over 50 were lost from various causes during the war.

France had 62 submarines at the beginning of the war, in 14 different classes. They operated mainly in the Mediterranean, and in the course of the war, 12 were lost. The Russians started the war with 58 submarines in service or under construction. The main class was the " Bars" with 24 boats. Twenty-four submarines were lost during the war.

Although Germany was banned from having submarines in the Treaty of Versailles, construction started in secret during the 1930s. When this became known, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1936 allowed Germany to achieve parity in submarines with Britain.

Germany started the war with only 65 submarines, with 21 at sea when war broke out. Germany soon built the largest submarine fleet during World War II. Due to the Treaty of Versailles limiting the surface navy, the rebuilding of the German surface forces had only begun in earnest a year before the outbreak of World War II. Having no hope of defeating the vastly superior Royal Navy decisively in a surface battle, the German High Command planned on fighting a campaign of "Guerre de course" (Merchant warfare), and immediately stopped all construction on capital surface ships, save the nearly completed Bismarck-class battleships and two cruisers, and switched the resources to submarines, which could be built more quickly. Though it took most of 1940 to expand production facilities and to start mass production, more than a thousand submarines were built by the end of the war.

After putting to sea, the U-boats operated mostly on their own trying to find convoys in areas assigned to them by the High Command. If a convoy was found, the submarine did not attack immediately, but shadowed the convoy and radioed to the German Command to allow other submarines in the area to find the convoy. The submarines were then grouped into a larger striking force and attacked the convoy simultaneously, preferably at night while surfaced to avoid the ASDIC.

During the first few years of World War II, the Ubootwaffe ("U-boat force") scored unprecedented success with these tactics (" First Happy Time"), but were too few to have any decisive success. By the spring of 1943, German U-boat construction was at full capacity, but this was more than nullified by increased numbers of convoy escorts and aircraft, as well as technical advances like radar and sonar. High Frequency Direction Finding (HF/DF, known as Huff-Duff) and Ultra allowed the Allies to route convoys around wolfpacks when they detected radio transmissions from trailing boats. The results were devastating: from March to July of that year, over 130 U-boats were lost, 41 in May alone. Concurrent Allied losses dropped dramatically, from 750,000 tons in March to 188,000 in July. Although the Battle of the Atlantic continued to the last day of the war, the U-boat arm was unable to stem the tide of personnel and supplies, paving the way for Operation Torch, Operation Husky, and ultimately, D-Day. Winston Churchill wrote the U-boat "peril" was the only thing to ever give him cause to doubt eventual Allied victory.

By the end of the war, almost 3,000 Allied ships (175 warships, 2,825 merchantmen) were sunk by U-boats. Of the 40,000 men in the U-boat service, 28,000 (70%) lost their lives.

Italian designs proved to be unsuitable for use in the Atlantic Ocean. Italian midget submarines were used in attacks against British shipping near the port of Gibraltar.

The French submarine fleet consisted of over 70 vessels (with some under construction) at the beginning of the war. After the Fall of France, the French-German Armistice required the return of all French submarines to German-controlled ports in France. Some of these submarines were forcibly seized by British forces.

The main operating theatres for British submarines were off the coast of Norway, in the Mediterranean, where a flotilla of submarines successfully disrupted the Axis replenishment route to North Africa from their base in Malta, as well as in the North Sea. As Germany was a Continental power, there was little opportunity for the British to sink German shipping in this theatre of the Atlantic.

From 1940, U-class submarines were stationed at Malta, to interdict enemy supplies bound for North Africa. Over a period of three years, this force sank over 1 million tons of shipping, and fatally undermined the attempts of the German High Command to adequately support General Erwin Rommel. Rommel's Chief of Staff, Fritz Bayerlein conceded that "We would have taken Alexandria and reached the Suez Canal, if it had not been for the work of your submarines". 45 vessels were lost during this campaign, and five Victoria Crosses were awarded to submariners serving in this theatre.

In addition, British submarines attacked Japanese shipping in the Far East, during the Pacific campaign. The Eastern Fleet was responsible for submarine operations in the Bay of Bengal, Strait of Malacca as far as Singapore, and the western coast of Sumatra to the Equator. Few large Japanese cargo ships operated in this area, and the British submarines' main targets were small craft operating in inshore waters. The submarines were deployed to conduct reconnaissance, interdict Japanese supplies travelling to Burma, and attack U-boats operating from Penang. The Eastern Fleet's submarine force continued to expand during 1944, and by October 1944 had sunk a cruiser, three submarines, six small naval vessels, 40,000 long tons (41,000 t) of merchant ships, and nearly 100 small vessels. In this theatre, the only documented instance of a submarine sinking another submarine while both were submerged occurred. HMS Venturer engaged the U864 and the Venturer crew manually computed a successful firing solution against a three-dimensionally manoeveuring target using techniques which became the basis of modern torpedo computer targeting systems.

By March 1945, British boats had gained control of the Strait of Malacca, preventing any supplies from reaching the Japanese forces in Burma by sea. By this time, there were few large Japanese ships in the region, and the submarines mainly operated against small ships which they attacked with their deck guns. The submarine HMS Trenchant torpedoed and sank the heavy cruiser Ashigara in the Bangka Strait, taking down some 1,200 Japanese army troops. Three British submarines ( HMS Stonehenge, Stratagem, and Porpoise) were sunk by the Japanese during the war.

Japan had the most varied fleet of submarines of World War II, including manned torpedoes ( Kaiten), midget submarines ( Ko-hyoteki, Kairyu), medium-range submarines, purpose-built supply submarines (many for use by the Army), long-range fleet submarines (many of which carried an aircraft), submarines with the highest submerged speeds of the conflict ( Sentaka I-200), and submarines that could carry multiple aircraft (WWII's largest submarine, the Sentoku I-400). These submarines were also equipped with the most advanced torpedo of the conflict, the oxygen-propelled Type 95 (what U.S. historian Samuel E. Morison postwar called "Long Lance").

Overall, despite their technical prowess, Japanese submarines, having been incorporated into the Imperial Navy's war plan of "Guerre D' Escadre" (Fleet Warfare), in contrast to Germany's war plan of "Guerre De Course", they were relatively unsuccessful. Japanese submarines were primarily used in the offensive roles against warships, which were fast, maneuverable and well-defended compared to merchant ships. In 1942, Japanese submarines sank two fleet aircraft carriers, one cruiser, and several destroyers and other warships, and damaged many others, including two battleships. They were not able to sustain these results afterward, as Allied fleets were reinforced and became better organized. By the end of the war, submarines were instead often used to transport supplies to island garrisons. During the war, Japan managed to sink about 1 million tons of merchant shipping (184 ships), compared to 1.5 million tons for Great Britain (493 ships), 4.65 million tons for the U.S. (1,079 ships) and 14.3 million tons for Germany (2,840 ships).

Early models were not very maneuverable under water, could not dive very deep, and lacked radar. Later in the war units that were fitted with radar were in some instances sunk due to the ability of U.S. radar sets to detect their emissions. For example, Batfish (SS-310) sank three such equipped submarines in the span of four days. After the war, several of Japan's most original submarines were sent to Hawaii for inspection in "Operation Road's End" (I-400, I-401, I-201 and I-203) before being scuttled by the U.S. Navy in 1946, when the Soviets demanded access to the submarines as well.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, many of the U.S. Navy's front-line Pacific Fleet surface ships were destroyed or severely damaged. The submarines survived the attack and carried the war to the enemy. Lacking support vessels, the submarines were asked to independently hunt and destroy Japanese ships and submarines. They did so very effectively.

During World War II, the submarine force was the most effective anti-ship and anti-submarine weapon in the entire American arsenal. Submarines, though only about 2 percent of the U.S. Navy, destroyed over 30 percent of the Japanese Navy, including 8 aircraft carriers, 1 battleship and 11 cruisers. U.S. submarines also destroyed over 60 percent of the Japanese merchant fleet, crippling Japan's ability to supply its military forces and industrial war effort. Allied submarines in the Pacific War destroyed more Japanese shipping than all other weapons combined. This feat was considerably aided by the Imperial Japanese Navy's failure to provide adequate escort forces for the nation's merchant fleet.

Of note, whereas Japanese submarine torpedoes of the war are considered the finest, those of U.S. Navy are considered the worst. For example, the U.S. Mark 14 torpedo typically ran ten feet too deep and was tipped with a Mk VI exploder, with both magnetic influence and contact features, neither reliable. The faulty depth control mechanism of the Mark 14 was corrected in August 1942, but field trials for the exploders were not ordered until mid-1943, when tests in Hawaii and Australia confirmed the flaws. In addition, the Mark 14 sometimes suffered circular runs, which sank at least one U.S. submarine, Tullibee. Fully operational Mark 14 torpedoes were not put into service until September 1943. The Mark 15 torpedo used by U.S. surface combatants had the same Mk VI exploder and was not fixed until late 1943. One attempt to correct the problems resulted in a wakeless, electric torpedo (the Mark 18) being placed in submarine service. Tang was lost to a circular run by one of these torpedoes. Given the prevalence of circular runs, there were probably other losses among boats which simply disappeared.

During World War II, 314 submarines served in the United States Navy, of which nearly 260 were deployed to the Pacific. On December 7, 1941, 111 boats were in commission and 203 submarines from the Gato, Balao, and Tench classes were commissioned during the war. During the war, 52 US submarines were lost to all causes, with 48 directly due to hostilities; 3,505 sailors were lost, the highest percentage killed in action of any US service arm in World War II. U.S. submarines sank 1,560 enemy vessels, a total tonnage of 5.3 million tons (55% of the total sunk), including 8 aircraft carriers, a battleship, three heavy cruisers, and over 200 other warships, and damaged several other ships including the battleships Yamato (badly damaged by ) and Musashi (damaged by ). In addition, the Japanese merchant marine lost 16,200 sailors killed and 53,400 wounded, of some 122,000 at the start of the war, due to submarines.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union maintained large submarine fleets that engaged in cat-and-mouse games. This continues today, on a much-reduced scale. The Soviet Union suffered the loss of at least four submarines during this period: K-129 was lost in 1968 (which the CIA attempted to retrieve from the ocean floor with the Howard Hughes-designed ship named Glomar Explorer), K-8 in 1970, K -219 in 1986 (subject of the film Hostile Waters), and Komsomolets (the only Mike class submarine) in 1989 (which held a depth record among the military submarines-1000 m, or 1300 m according to the article K-278). Many other Soviet subs, such as K-19 (first Soviet nuclear submarine, and first Soviet sub at North Pole) were badly damaged by fire or radiation leaks. The United States lost two nuclear submarines during this time: USS Thresher and Scorpion. The Thresher was lost due to equipment failure, and the exact cause of the loss of the Scorpion is not known.

The sinking of PNS Ghazi in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was the first submarine casualty in the South Asian region.

The United Kingdom employed nuclear-powered submarines against Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War. The sinking of the cruiser ARA General Belgrano by HMS Conqueror was the first sinking by a nuclear-powered submarine in war. During this conflict, the conventional Argentinian submarine ARA Santa Fé was disabled by a Sea Skua missile, and the ARA San Luis claimed to have made unsuccessful attacks on the British fleet.

There have been a number of accidental sinkings, but also some collisions between submarines. Up to August 1914, there were 68 submarine accidents. There were 23 collisions, 7 battery gas explosions, 12 gasoline explosions, and 13 sinkings due to hull openings not being closed. HMS Affray was lost in the English Channel in 1951 due to the snort mast fracturing and USS Thresher in 1963 due to a pipe weld failure during a test dive. Many other scenarios have been proven to be probable causes of sinking, most notably a battery malfunction causing a torpedo to detonate internally, and the loss of the Russian Kursk on 12 August 2000 probably due to a torpedo explosion. An example of the latter was the incident between the Russian K-276 and the USS Baton Rouge in February 1992.

Since the year 2000 there have been 9 major naval incidents involving submarines. There were three Russian submarine incidents, in two of which the submarines in question were lost, along with three United States submarine incidents, one Chinese incident, one Canadian, and one Australian incident. In August 2005, , a Russian Priz-class rescue submarine, was trapped by cables and/or nets off of Petropavlovsk, and saved when a British ROV cut them free in a massive international effort.

1. G. L'E. Turner, 'Bourne, William (c.1535-1582)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: ^ "Bourne, William" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885-1900.

2. ^ Davis, RH (1955). Deep Diving and Submarine Operations (6th ed.). Tolworth, Surbiton, Surrey: Siebe Gorman & Company Ltd. p. 693.

3. ^ Acott, C. (1999). "A brief history of diving and decompression illness". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801.

4. ^ by I.W.M.A., London, printed by M.F. for Sa: Gellibrand at the brasen Serpent in Pauls Church-yard. 1648. Quoted in Asbach-Schnitker, Brigitte: John Wilkins, Mercury ... Bibliography, 7.3 The Works of John Wilkins, n° 24

5. ^ Acott, C. (1999). "A brief history of diving and decompression illness". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801.

6. ^ Coggins, Jack (2002). Ships and Seamen of the American Revolution. Mineola, NY: Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-42072-1. OCLC 48795929.

7. ^ "Makeshift submarine found in East River". 3 August 2007. Archived from the original on 30 May 2012.

8. ^ Egg-head skipper shore isn't upset Jotham Sederstrom and Christina Boyle, New York Daily News

9. ^ Konstantinov, Pavel (2004). "Pervaya raketnaya podvodnaya lodka" Первая ракетная подводная лодка [THe first rocket-equipped submarine] (in Russian). Но еще более были потрясены случайные зеваки, обнаружив, что на берегу находился сам император Николай I в окружении немногочисленной свиты и военных и с интересом наблюдал за происходящим. Откуда было знать непосвященным чухонцам, что они явились свидетелями первых испытаний первой в мире металлической подводной лодки-ракетоносца! А управлял ею лично генерал Карл Андреевич Шильдер, создатель подводного судна.

10. Hipopotamo submarine: Scale model at the Museum of Maritime History of the Ecuadorian Navy; ^ http://www.digeim.armada.mil.ec/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=category&id=9:submarino-qhipopotamoq&Itemid=12 Archived 19 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine

11. ^ Elliott, David. "A short history of submarine escape: The development of an extreme air dive". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. 29 (2).

12. ^ James P. Delgado (2006). "Archaeological Reconnaissance of the 1865 American-Built Sub Marine Explorer at Isla San Telmo, Archipielago de las Perlas, Panama". International Journal of Nautical Archaeology Journal. 35 (2): 230-252. doi:10.1111/j.1095-9270.2006.00100.x.

13. ^ Delgado, James P. (6 March 2012). Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns, and Pearls. Texas A&M University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-1-60344-472-9.

14. ^ "Recovering Chile's 19th Century Shipwrecks in Valparaiso's Port". The Santiago Times. 25 November 2006. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008.

15. ^ "Construction and launch of the Resurgam". E. Chambré Hardman Archive. Archived from the original on 22 February 2012.

16. ^ "Submarine Heritage Centre - submarine history of Barrow-in-Furness". Submarineheritage.com. Archived from the original on 4 July 2007.

17. Humble, Richard (1981). ^ Underwater warfare. Chartwell Books, p. 174. ISBN 978-0-89009-424-2

18. Karl G. Strecker: ^ "Vom Walter-U-Boot zum Waffelautomaten", Köster Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89574-438-7

19. ^ "Eyes from the Deep: A History of U.S. Navy Submarine Periscopes". Undersea Warfare. Archived from the original on 16 October 2012.

20. ^ Hill, M. N. (1962). Physical Oceanography. Allan R. Robinson. Harvard University Press. p. 498.

21. Chuck Veit "The Innovative Mysterious Alligator" page 26 U.S. Naval Institute NAVAL HISTORY published August 2010 ^ ISSN 1042-1920

22. Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, Bernd Greiner, German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.) (2005). "^ A world at total war: global conflict and the politics of destruction, 1937-1945". Cambridge University Press. p.73. ISBN 978-0-521-83432-2

23. ^ "Submarine History: Submarine Service: Operations and Support: Royal Navy". Archived from the original on 9 June 2008.

24. Blair, Clay, Jr. ^ Silent Victory, pp. 991-2. The others were lost to accidents or, in the case of Seawolf, friendly fire.

Blair, Clay Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, ISBN 1-55750-217-X

Compton-Hall, Richard. Submarine Boats, the beginnings of underwater warfare, Windward, 1983.

Fontenoy, Paul. Submarines: An Illustrated History of Their Impact. ABC-CLIO, 2007. ISBN 9781851095636

Harris, Brayton (Captain, USN ret.). "The Navy Times Book of Submarines: A Political, Social, and Military History." Berkley Books, 1997

Jentschura, Hansgeorg; Dieter Jung, Peter Mickel. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945. United States Naval Institute, 1977. Annapolis, Maryland. ISBN 0-87021-893-X.

Lockwood, Charles A. (VAdm, USN ret.), Sink 'Em All: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific, (1951)

Polmar, Norman & Kenneth Moore. Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of U. S. and Soviet Submarines. Brassey's, Washington DC, 2004. ISBN 1574885944

Preston, Anthony. The World's Greatest Submarines Greenwich Editions 2005.

Showell, Jak. The U-Boat Century-German Submarine Warfare 1906-2006. Great Britain; Chatham Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-86176-241-0.

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The concept of underwater combat has roots deep in antiquity. There are images of men using hollow sticks to breathe underwater for hunting at the temples at Thebes, but the first known military use occurred during the siege of Syracuse (415-413 BC), where divers cleared obstructions, according to the History of the Peloponnesian War.

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American inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world record 1,093 patents. In addition, he created the world's first industrial research laboratory. Edison was the quintessential American......

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Thomas Edison applied for his first patent in 1868, when he was just 21 years old. The famous inventor's first brainchild was for a device that recorded legislative votes. That was just the start of a career in which he would obtain 1,093 U.S. patents, in addition to another 500 to 600 applications that he either didn't finish or were rejected. But Edison's greatest invention may have been developing a new process for coming up with inventions.

"When Edison raised enormous capital, built a laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J., and hired a staff of several dozen, each with distinct talents, he pioneered what became the modern corporate research and development process," explains Ernest Freeberg, a historian at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and author of The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America.

"He considered it an invention factory, one that would produce surprising new products at a regular rate."

In many cases, Edison's genius was taking a new technology that someone else had pioneered and developing a superior way of doing the same thing. "An invention not only has to work fairly well, but it has to be something that the market wants and can afford to buy. Edison understood that as well as anyone in his day," says Freeberg.

Below are some of Edison's most significant inventions.

Automatic Telegraph

While Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph in the 1830s and 1840s made it possible for the first time to communicate over long distances, the device had its drawbacks. An operator had to listen to incoming dots and dashes in Morse code, which slowed messages to a speed of 25 to 40 words per minute. A British system for automatically printing code in ink on paper only achieved 120 words tops.

Between 1870 and 1874, Edison developed a vastly superior system, in which a telegraph receiver utilized a metal stylus to mark chemically-treated paper, which then could be run through a typewriter-like device. It was capable of recording up to 1,000 words a minute, which made it possible to send long messages quickly.

Carbon Telephone Transmitter

It was Alexander Graham Bell who patented the telephone in 1876. But Edison, with his knack for building upon others' innovations, found a way to improve Bell's transmitter, which was limited in how far apart phones could be by weak electrical current. Edison got the idea of using a battery to provide current on the phone line and to control its strength by using carbon to vary the resistance. To do that, he designed a transmitter in which a small piece of lampblack (a black carbon made from soot) was placed behind the diaphragm. When someone spoke into the phone, the sound waves moved the diaphragm, and the pressure on the lampblack changed. Edison later replaced the lampblack with granules made from coal-a basic design that was used until the 1980s.

The Light Bulb

Contrary to popular belief, Edison didn't actually invent the incandescent light bulb. But he invented and marketed a design that was the first to be long-lasting enough to be practical for widespread use.

"Edison was one of a half dozen who were putting the elements of a viable lighting system together in those years, and since Edison was late to the race, he benefited from all his predecessors and rivals," Freeberg explains.

In the late 1870s, Edison designed a vacuum bulb, in which a metal filament could be heated to create light. One night, after absent-mindedly rolling between his fingers a piece of lampblack, the material he used in his telephone receiver, he got the idea for switching to a carbonized filament. After initially using carbonized cardboard, he began experimenting with other materials, and eventually settled upon bamboo, which possessed long fibers that made it more durable. Eventually, the combination of bamboo filaments and an improved vacuum pump that removed air more effectively enabled Edison to increase the lifetime of bulbs to approximately 1,200 hours.

Phonograph

While developing his telephone transmitter, Edison got the idea of creating a machine that could record and play back telephone messages. That notion led him to imagine being able to record not just voices, but music and other sounds, by using sound to vibrate a diaphragm and push a stylus that made indentations on a cylinder covered with wax paper that was being turned by a crank.

In late 1877, he got a machinist to build the device, using tin foil instead of wax, and Edison recorded the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." The following year, he was granted a patent for the design, which also included a lighter needle to find the groves and transmit vibrations to a second diaphragm, which recreated the person's voice.

Edison's phonograph created a sensation and helped enhance his reputation as a great inventor. Eventually, he began to market and sell the machines and cylinder records, reverting again to using wax. But by the early 1900s, the Victor Talking Machine Company's phonographs that played discs surpassed Edison's cylinder phonographs in popularity. Even though cylinders produced better-quality sound, the early discs had a big advantage in that they could fit four minutes of music, compared to the two minutes that could fit on a cylinder.

Movie Camera and Viewer

In the late 1880s, Edison supervised his lab's development of a technology "that does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." Most of the work on the Kinetograph, an early movie camera, and the Kinetoscope, a single-person peephole movie viewer, was actually performed by Edison's employee William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson. Movies became a big industry and Edison's camera and viewer were quickly replaced by innovations such as the Lumière Cinématographe, a combination camera, printer and projector that allowed audiences to watch a film together. But Edison adjusted and his company became a thriving early movie studio, churning out scores of silent films between the 1890s and 1918, when it shut down production.

Alkaline Storage Battery

When the automobile was developed in the late 1800s, electric vehicles were more popular than those equipped with gasoline-burning internal combustion engines. But early electric cars had a big drawback-the batteries they used were heavy and tended to leak acid, which corroded the cars' interiors.

Edison decided to take on the challenge of inventing a lighter, more dependable and more powerful battery. After conducting extensive research and the embarrassing flop of an early design, Edison came up with a reliable alkaline battery, and in 1910 began production of it. His work, however, was soon overshadowed by Henry Ford's development of the inexpensive Model T car that ran on an internal combustion engine. Nevertheless, Edison's storage battery was used in mining lamps, trains and submarines and turned into the most successful product of Edison's later career.

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6 Inventions by Thomas Edison That Took the World by Storm

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Thomas Edison applied for his first patent in 1868, when he was just 21 years old. The famous inventor's first brainchild was for a device that recorded legislative votes. That was just the start of a career in which he would obtain 1,093 U.S.

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We created technology to make those so we could more easily satisfy our sweet tooth. Humans invented the wheel to move things like goods around without having to carry them. We invented the horse or oxen-pulled plow to help us grow more food. We created cars to help us get from one point to another faster.

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The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is one of the categories of world history. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. The term technology comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art and craft, and the word logos, meaning word and speech. It was first used to describe applied arts, but it is now used to describe advancements and changes which affect the environment around us.

New knowledge has also enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors are made possible by technologies that assist humans in traveling to places they could not previously reach, and by scientific instruments by which we study nature in more detail than our natural senses allow.

Since much of technology is applied science, technical history is connected to the history of science. Since technology uses resources, technical history is tightly connected to economic history. From those resources, technology produces other resources, including technological artifacts used in everyday life. Technological change affects, and is affected by, a society's cultural traditions. It is a force for economic growth and a means to develop and project economic, political, military power and wealth.

Many sociologists and anthropologists have created social theories dealing with social and cultural evolution. Some, like Lewis H. Morgan, Leslie White, and Gerhard Lenski have declared technological progress to be the primary factor driving the development of human civilization. Morgan's concept of three major stages of social evolution (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) can be divided by technological milestones, such as fire. White argued the measure by which to judge the evolution of culture was energy.

For White, "the primary function of culture" is to "harness and control energy." White differentiates between five stages of human development: In the first, people use the energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use the energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants ( agricultural revolution). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy. White introduced the formula P=E/T, where P is the development index, E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of the efficiency of technical factors using the energy. In his own words, "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased". Nikolai Kardashev extrapolated his theory, creating the Kardashev scale, which categorizes the energy use of advanced civilizations.

Lenski's approach focuses on information. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He identifies four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in communications technology translate into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of wealth, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication, and economy:

Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology.

In economics, productivity is a measure of technological progress. Productivity increases when fewer inputs (classically labor and capital but some measures include energy and materials) are used in the production of a unit of output. Another indicator of technological progress is the development of new products and services, which is necessary to offset unemployment that would otherwise result as labor inputs are reduced. In developed countries productivity growth has been slowing since the late 1970s; however, productivity growth was higher in some economic sectors, such as manufacturing. For example, employment in manufacturing in the United States declined from over 30% in the 1940s to just over 10% 70 years later. Similar changes occurred in other developed countries. This stage is referred to as post-industrial.

In the late 1970s sociologists and anthropologists like Alvin Toffler (author of Future Shock), Daniel Bell and John Naisbitt have approached the theories of post-industrial societies, arguing that the current era of industrial society is coming to an end, and services and information are becoming more important than industry and goods. Some extreme visions of the post-industrial society, especially in fiction, are strikingly similar to the visions of near and post- singularity societies.

The following is a summary of the history of technology by time period and geography:

During most of the Paleolithic - the bulk of the Stone Age - all humans had a lifestyle which involved limited tools and few permanent settlements. The first major technologies were tied to survival, hunting, and food preparation. Stone tools and weapons, fire, and clothing were technological developments of major importance during this period.

Human ancestors have been using stone and other tools since long before the emergence of Homo sapiens approximately 300,000 years ago. The earliest direct evidence of tool usage was found in Ethiopia within the Great Rift Valley, dating back to 2.5 million years ago. The earliest methods of stone tool making, known as the Oldowan "industry", date back to at least 2.3 million years ago. This era of stone tool use is called the Paleolithic, or "Old stone age", and spans all of human history up to the development of agriculture approximately 12,000 years ago.

To make a stone tool, a " core" of hard stone with specific flaking properties (such as flint) was struck with a hammerstone. This flaking produced sharp edges which could be used as tools, primarily in the form of choppers or scrapers. These tools greatly aided the early humans in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to perform a variety of tasks including butchering carcasses (and breaking bones to get at the marrow); chopping wood; cracking open nuts; skinning an animal for its hide, and even forming other tools out of softer materials such as bone and wood.

The earliest stone tools were irrelevant, being little more than a fractured rock. In the Acheulian era, beginning approximately 1.65 million years ago, methods of working these stones into specific shapes, such as hand axes emerged. This early Stone Age is described as the Lower Paleolithic.

The Middle Paleolithic, approximately 300,000 years ago, saw the introduction of the prepared-core technique, where multiple blades could be rapidly formed from a single core stone. The Upper Paleolithic, beginning approximately 40,000 years ago, saw the introduction of pressure flaking, where a wood, bone, or antler punch could be used to shape a stone very finely.

The later Stone Age, during which the rudiments of agricultural technology were developed, is called the Neolithic period. During this period, polished stone tools were made from a variety of hard rocks such as flint, jade, jadeite, and greenstone, largely by working exposures as quarries, but later the valuable rocks were pursued by tunneling underground, the first steps in mining technology. The polished axes were used for forest clearance and the establishment of crop farming and were so effective as to remain in use when bronze and iron appeared. These stone axes were used alongside a continued use of stone tools such as a range of projectiles, knives, and scrapers, as well as tools, made organic materials such as wood, bone, and antler.

Stone Age cultures developed music and engaged in organized warfare. Stone Age humans developed ocean-worthy outrigger canoe technology, leading to migration across the Malay archipelago, across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and also across the Pacific Ocean, which required knowledge of the ocean currents, weather patterns, sailing, and celestial navigation.

Although Paleolithic cultures left no written records, the shift from nomadic life to settlement and agriculture can be inferred from a range of archaeological evidence. Such evidence includes ancient tools, cave paintings, and other prehistoric art, such as the Venus of Willendorf. Human remains also provide direct evidence, both through the examination of bones, and the study of mummies. Scientists and historians have been able to form significant inferences about the lifestyle and culture of various prehistoric peoples, and especially their technology.

Metallic copper occurs on the surface of weathered copper ore deposits and copper was used before copper smelting was known. Copper smelting is believed to have originated when the technology of pottery kilns allowed sufficiently high temperatures. The concentration of various elements such as arsenic increase with depth in copper ore deposits and smelting of these ores yields arsenical bronze, which can be sufficiently work hardened to be suitable for making tools.

Bronze is an alloy of copper with tin; the latter being found in relatively few deposits globally caused a long time to elapse before true tin bronze became widespread. (See: Tin sources and trade in ancient times) Bronze was a major advancement over stone as a material for making tools, both because of its mechanical properties like strength and ductility and because it could be cast in molds to make intricately shaped objects. Bronze significantly advanced shipbuilding technology with better tools and bronze nails. Bronze nails replaced the old method of attaching boards of the hull with cord woven through drilled holes. Better ships enabled long-distance trade and the advance of civilization.

This technological trend apparently began in the Fertile Crescent and spread outward over time.[citation needed ] These developments were not, and still are not, universal. The three-age system does not accurately describe the technology history of groups outside of Eurasia, and does not apply at all in the case of some isolated populations, such as the Spinifex People, the Sentinelese, and various Amazonian tribes, which still make use of Stone Age technology, and have not developed agricultural or metal technology.

An axehead made of iron, dating from the Swedish Iron Age

Before iron smelting was developed the only iron was obtained from meteorites and is usually identified by having nickel content. Meteoric iron was rare and valuable, but was sometimes used to make tools and other implements, such as fish hooks.

The involved the adoption of iron smelting technology. It generally replaced bronze and made it possible to produce tools which were stronger, lighter and cheaper to make than bronze equivalents. The raw materials to make iron, such as ore and limestone, are far more abundant than copper and especially tin ores. Consequently, iron was produced in many areas.

It was not possible to mass manufacture steel or pure iron because of the high temperatures required. Furnaces could reach melting temperature but the crucibles and molds needed for melting and casting had not been developed. Steel could be produced by forging bloomery iron to reduce the carbon content in a somewhat controllable way, but steel produced by this method was not homogeneous.

In many Eurasian cultures, the Iron Age was the last major step before the development of written language, though again this was not universally the case.

In Europe, large hill forts were built either as a refuge in time of war or sometimes as permanent settlements. In some cases, existing forts from the Bronze Age were expanded and enlarged. The pace of land clearance using the more effective iron axes increased, providing more farmland to support the growing population.

Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and its peoples ( Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians) lived in cities from c. 4000 BC, and developed a sophisticated architecture in mud-brick and stone, including the use of the true arch. The walls of Babylon were so massive they were quoted as a Wonder of the World. They developed extensive water systems; canals for transport and irrigation in the alluvial south, and catchment systems stretching for tens of kilometers in the hilly north. Their palaces had sophisticated drainage systems.

Writing was invented in Mesopotamia, using the cuneiform script. Many records on clay tablets and stone inscriptions have survived. These civilizations were early adopters of bronze technologies which they used for tools, weapons and monumental statuary. By 1200 BC they could cast objects 5 m long in a single piece.

Several of the six classic simple machines were invented in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians have been credited with the invention of the wheel. The wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the potter's wheel, invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC. This led to the invention of the wheeled vehicle in Mesopotamia during the early 4th millennium BC. Depictions of wheeled wagons found on clay tablet pictographs at the Eanna district of Uruk are dated between 3700 and 3500 BC. The lever was used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC.

The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC. The Assyrian King Sennacherib (704-681 BC) claims to have invented automatic sluices and to have been the first to use water screw pumps, of up to 30 tons weight, which were cast using two-part clay molds rather than by the ' lost wax' process. The Jerwan Aqueduct (c. 688 BC) is made with stone arches and lined with waterproof concrete.

The earliest evidence of water wheels and watermills date back to the ancient Near East in the 4th century BC, specifically in the Persian Empire before 350 BC, in the regions of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Persia (Iran). This pioneering use of water power constituted the first human-devised motive force not to rely on muscle power (besides the sail).

The Egyptians, known for building pyramids centuries before the creation of modern tools, invented and used many simple machines, such as the ramp to aid construction processes. Historians and archaeologists have found evidence that the pyramids were built using three of what is called the Six Simple Machines, from which all machines are based. These machines are the inclined plane, the wedge, and the lever, which allowed the ancient Egyptians to move millions of limestone blocks which weighed approximately 3.5 tons (7,000 lbs.) each into place to create structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is 481 feet (147 meters) high.

Egyptian society made several significant advances during dynastic periods in many areas of technology. According to Hossam Elanzeery, they were the first civilization to use timekeeping devices such as sundials, shadow clocks, and obelisks and successfully leveraged their knowledge of astronomy to create a calendar model that society still uses today. They developed shipbuilding technology that saw them progress from papyrus reed vessels to cedar wood ships while also pioneering the use of rope trusses and stem-mounted rudders. The Egyptians also used their knowledge of anatomy to lay the foundation for many modern medical techniques and practiced the earliest known version of neuroscience. Elanzeery also states that they used and furthered mathematical science, as evidenced in the building of the pyramids.

Ancient Egyptians also invented and pioneered many food technologies that have become the basis of modern food technology processes. Based on paintings and reliefs found in tombs, as well as archaeological artifacts, scholars like Paul T Nicholson believe that the Ancient Egyptians established systematic farming practices, engaged in cereal processing, brewed beer and baked bread, processed meat, practiced viticulture and created the basis for modern wine production, and created condiments to complement, preserve and mask the flavors of their food.

The Indus Valley civilization, situated in a resource-rich area (in modern Pakistan and northwestern India), is notable for its early application of city planning, sanitation technologies, and plumbing. Indus Valley construction and architecture, called ' Vaastu Shastra', suggests a thorough understanding of materials engineering, hydrology, and sanitation.

The Chinese made many first-known discoveries and developments. Major technological contributions from China include the earliest know form of the binary code and epigenetic sequencing early seismological detectors, matches, paper, Helicopter rotor, Raised-relief map, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, water powered blast furnace bellows, the iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the parachute, the compass, the rudder, the crossbow, the South Pointing Chariot and gunpowder. China also developed deep well drilling, which they used to extract brine for making salt. Some of these wells, which were as deep as 900 meters, produced natural gas which was used for evaporating brine.

Other Chinese discoveries and inventions from the Medieval period include block printing, movable type printing, phosphorescent paint, endless power chain drive and the clock escapement mechanism. The solid-fuel rocket was invented in China about 1150, nearly 200 years after the invention of gunpowder (which acted as the rocket's fuel). Decades before the West's age of exploration, the Chinese emperors of the Ming Dynasty also sent large fleets on maritime voyages, some reaching Africa.

The Hellenistic period of Mediterranean history began in the 4th century BC with Alexander's conquests, which led to the emergence of a Hellenistic civilization representing a synthesis of Greek and Near-Eastern cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean region, including the Balkans, Levant and Egypt. With Ptolemaic Egypt as its intellectual center and Greek as the lingua franca, the Hellenistic civilization included Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Persian and Phoenician scholars and engineers who wrote in Greek.

Hellenistic engineers of the Eastern Mediterranean were responsible for a number of inventions and improvements to existing technology. The Hellenistic period saw a sharp increase in technological advancement, fostered by a climate of openness to new ideas, the blossoming of a mechanistic philosophy, and the establishment of the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt and its close association with the adjacent museion. In contrast to the typically anonymous inventors of earlier ages, ingenious minds such as Archimedes, Philo of Byzantium, Heron, Ctesibius, and Archytas remain known by name to posterity.

Ancient agriculture, as in any period prior to the modern age the primary mode of production and subsistence, and its irrigation methods, were considerably advanced by the invention and widespread application of a number of previously unknown water-lifting devices, such as the vertical water-wheel, the compartmented wheel, the water turbine, Archimedes' screw, the bucket-chain and pot-garland, the force pump, the suction pump, the double-action piston pump and quite possibly the chain pump.

In other fields, ancient Greek innovations include the catapult and the gastraphetes crossbow in warfare, hollow bronze-casting in metallurgy, the dioptra for surveying, in infrastructure the lighthouse, central heating, a tunnel excavated from both ends by scientific calculations, and the ship trackway. In transport, great progress resulted from the invention of the winch and the odometer.

Further newly created techniques and items were spiral staircases, the chain drive, sliding calipers and showers.

The Roman Empire expanded from Italia across the entire Mediterranean region between the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. Its most advanced and economically productive provinces outside of Italia were the Eastern Roman provinces in the Balkans, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Levant, with Roman Egypt in particular being the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italia.

The Roman Empire developed an intensive and sophisticated agriculture, expanded upon existing iron working technology, created laws providing for individual ownership, advanced stone masonry technology, advanced road-building (exceeded only in the 19th century), military engineering, civil engineering, spinning and weaving and several different machines like the Gallic reaper that helped to increase productivity in many sectors of the Roman economy. Roman engineers were the first to build monumental arches, amphitheatres, aqueducts, public baths, true arch bridges, harbours, reservoirs and dams, vaults and domes on a very large scale across their Empire. Notable Roman inventions include the book (Codex), glass blowing and concrete. Because Rome was located on a volcanic peninsula, with sand which contained suitable crystalline grains, the concrete which the Romans formulated was especially durable. Some of their buildings have lasted 2000 years, to the present day.

In Roman Egypt, the inventor Hero of Alexandria was the first to experiment with a wind-powered mechanical device (see Heron's windwheel) and even created the earliest steam-powered device (the aeolipile), opening up new possibilities in harnessing natural forces. He also devised a vending machine. However, his inventions were primarily toys, rather than practical machines.

Inca, Maya, and Aztec

Walls at Sacsayhuaman

Though the Maya civilization did not incorporate metallurgy or wheel technology in their architectural constructions, they developed complex writing and astronomical systems, and created beautiful sculptural works in stone and flint. Like the Inca, the Maya also had command of fairly advanced agricultural and construction technology. The Maya are also responsible for creating the first pressurized water system in Mesoamerica, located in the Maya site of Palenque.

One of the most significant developments of the Medieval were economies in which water and wind power were more significant than animal and human muscle power. Most water and wind power was used for milling grain. Water power was also used for blowing air in blast furnace, pulping rags for paper making and for felting wool. The Domesday Book recorded 5,624 water mills in Great Britain in 1086, being about one per thirty families.

The Arab Agricultural Revolution occurred during this period. It was a transformation in agriculture from the 8th to the 13th century in the Islamic region of the Old World. The economy established by Arab and other Muslim traders across the Old World enabled the diffusion of many crops and farming techniques throughout the Islamic world, as well as the adaptation of crops and techniques from and to regions outside it. Advances were made in animal husbandry, irrigation, and farming, with the help of new technology such as the windmill. These changes made agriculture much more productive, supporting population growth, urbanisation, and increased stratification of society.

Muslim engineers in the Islamic world made wide use of hydropower, along with early uses of tidal power, wind power, fossil fuels such as petroleum, and large factory complexes ( tiraz in Arabic). A variety of industrial mills were employed in the Islamic world, including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, and tide mills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation. Muslim engineers also employed water turbines and gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Many of these technologies were transferred to medieval Europe.

Wind-powered machines used to grind grain and pump water, the windmill and wind pump, first appeared in what are now Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan by the 9th century. They were used to grind grains and draw up water, and used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries. Sugar mills first appeared in the medieval Islamic world. They were first driven by watermills, and then windmills from the 9th and 10th centuries in what are today Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through Al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted across Europe. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century.

The Muslim world adopted papermaking from China. The earliest paper mills appeared in Abbasid-era Baghdad during 794-795. The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via predominantly Islamic countries, where formulas for pure potassium nitrate were developed.

The spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by the early 11th century. It was later widely adopted in Europe, where it was adapted into the spinning jenny, a key device during the Industrial Revolution. The crankshaft was invented by Al-Jazari in 1206, and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine and automatic controls. The camshaft was also first described by Al-Jazari in 1206.

Early programmable machines were also invented in the Muslim world. The first music sequencer, a programmable musical instrument, was an automated flute player invented by the Banu Musa brothers, described in their Book of Ingenious Devices, in the 9th century. In 1206, Al-Jazari invented programmable automata/ robots. He described four automaton musicians, including two drummers operated by a programmable drum machine, where the drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns. The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari, was an early programmable analog computer.

In the Ottoman Empire, a practical impulse steam turbine was invented in 1551 by Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf in Ottoman Egypt. He described a method for rotating a spit by means of a jet of steam playing on rotary vanes around the periphery of a wheel. Known as a steam jack, a similar device for rotating a spit was also later described by John Wilkins in 1648.

While medieval technology has been long depicted as a step backward in the evolution of Western technology, a generation of medievalists (like the American historian of science Lynn White) stressed from the 1940s onwards the innovative character of many medieval techniques. Genuine medieval contributions include for example mechanical clocks, spectacles and vertical windmills. Medieval ingenuity was also displayed in the invention of seemingly inconspicuous items like the watermark or the functional button. In navigation, the foundation to the subsequent age of exploration was laid by the introduction of pintle-and-gudgeon rudders, lateen sails, the dry compass, the horseshoe and the astrolabe.

Significant advances were also made in military technology with the development of plate armour, steel crossbows and cannon. The Middle Ages are perhaps best known for their architectural heritage: While the invention of the rib vault and pointed arch gave rise to the high rising Gothic style, the ubiquitous medieval fortifications gave the era the almost proverbial title of the 'age of castles'.

Papermaking, a 2nd-century Chinese technology, was carried to the Middle East when a group of Chinese papermakers were captured in the 8th century. Papermaking technology was spread to Europe by the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. A paper mill was established in Sicily in the 12th century. In Europe the fiber to make pulp for making paper was obtained from linen and cotton rags. Lynn Townsend White Jr. credited the spinning wheel with increasing the supply of rags, which led to cheap paper, which was a factor in the development of printing.

Before the development of modern engineering, mathematics was used by artisans and craftsmen, such as millwrights, clock makers, instrument makers and surveyors. Aside from these professions, universities were not believed to have had much practical significance to technology.

A standard reference for the state of mechanical arts during the Renaissance is given in the mining engineering treatise De re metallica (1556), which also contains sections on geology, mining and chemistry. De re metallica was the standard chemistry reference for the next 180 years. Among the water powered mechanical devices in use were ore stamping mills, forge hammers, blast bellows, and suction pumps.

Due to the casting of cannon, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The blast furnace had been used in China since the 4th century BC.

The era is marked by such profound technical advancements like linear perceptivity, double shell domes or Bastion fortresses. Note books of the Renaissance artist-engineers such as Taccola and Leonardo da Vinci give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied. Architects and engineers were inspired by the structures of Ancient Rome, and men like Brunelleschi created the large dome of Florence Cathedral as a result. He was awarded one of the first patents ever issued to protect an ingenious crane he designed to raise the large masonry stones to the top of the structure. Military technology developed rapidly with the widespread use of the cross-bow and ever more powerful artillery, as the city-states of Italy were usually in conflict with one another. Powerful families like the Medici were strong patrons of the arts and sciences. Renaissance science spawned the Scientific Revolution; science and technology began a cycle of mutual advancement.

An improved sailing ship, the nau or carrack, enabled the Age of Exploration with the European colonization of the Americas, epitomized by Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. Pioneers like Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Magellan and Christopher Columbus explored the world in search of new trade routes for their goods and contacts with Africa, India and China to shorten the journey compared with traditional routes overland. They produced new maps and charts which enabled following mariners to explore further with greater confidence. Navigation was generally difficult, however, owing to the problem of longitude and the absence of accurate chronometers. European powers rediscovered the idea of the civil code, lost since the time of the Ancient Greeks.

Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines

Mines were becoming increasingly deep and were expensive to drain with horse powered bucket and chain pumps and wooden piston pumps. Some mines used as many as 500 horses. Horse-powered pumps were replaced by the Savery steam pump (1698) and the Newcomen steam engine (1712).

Industrial Revolution (1760-1830s)

Before invention of machinery to spin yarn and weave cloth, spinning was done using the spinning wheel and weaving was done on a hand-and-foot-operated loom. It took from three to five spinners to supply one weaver. The invention of the flying shuttle in 1733 doubled the output of a weaver, creating a shortage of spinners. The spinning frame for wool was invented in 1738. The spinning jenny, invented in 1764, was a machine that used multiple spinning wheels; however, it produced low quality thread. The water frame patented by Richard Arkwright in 1767, produced a better quality thread than the spinning jenny. The spinning mule, patented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton, produced a high quality thread. The power loom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1787.

The Iron Bridge

In the mid-1750s, the steam engine was applied to the water power-constrained iron, copper and lead industries for powering blast bellows. These industries were located near the mines, some of which were using steam engines for mine pumping. Steam engines were too powerful for leather bellows, so cast iron blowing cylinders were developed in 1768. Steam powered blast furnaces achieved higher temperatures, allowing the use of more lime in iron blast furnace feed. (Lime rich slag was not free-flowing at the previously used temperatures.) With a sufficient lime ratio, sulfur from coal or coke fuel reacts with the slag so that the sulfur does not contaminate the iron. Coal and coke were cheaper and more abundant fuel. As a result, iron production rose significantly during the last decades of the 18th century. Coal converted to coke fueled higher temperature blast furnaces and produced cast iron in much larger amounts than before, allowing the creation of a range of structures such as The Iron Bridge. Cheap coal meant that industry was no longer constrained by water resources driving the mills, although it continued as a valuable source of power.

The preserved Rocket

The steam engine helped drain the mines, so more coal reserves could be accessed, and the output of coal increased. The development of the high-pressure steam engine made locomotives possible, and a transport revolution followed. The steam engine which had existed since the early 18th century, was practically applied to both steamboat and railway transportation. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first purpose-built railway line, opened in 1830, the Rocket locomotive of Robert Stephenson being one of its first working locomotives used.

Manufacture of ships' pulley blocks by all-metal machines at the Portsmouth Block Mills in 1803 instigated the age of sustained mass production. Machine tools used by engineers to manufacture parts began in the first decade of the century, notably by Richard Roberts and Joseph Whitworth. The development of interchangeable parts through what is now called the American system of manufacturing began in the firearms industry at the U.S. Federal arsenals in the early 19th century, and became widely used by the end of the century.

Second Industrial Revolution (1860s-1914)

Edison electric light bulbs 1879-80

The 19th century saw astonishing developments in transportation, construction, manufacturing and communication technologies originating in Europe. After a recession at the end of the 1830s and a general slowdown in major inventions, the Second Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid innovation and industrialization that began in the 1860s or around 1870 and lasted until World War I. It included rapid development of chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel technologies connected with highly structured technology research.

Telegraphy developed into a practical technology in the 19th century to help run the railways safely. Along with the development of telegraphy was the patenting of the first telephone. March 1876 marks the date that Alexander Graham Bell officially patented his version of an "electric telegraph". Although Bell is noted with the creation of the telephone, it is still debated about who actually developed the first working model.

Building on improvements in vacuum pumps and materials research, incandescent light bulbs became practical for general use in the late 1870s. Edison Electric Illuminating Company, a company founded by Thomas Edison with financial backing from Spencer Trask, built and managed the first electricity network. Electrification was rated the most important technical development of the 20th century as the foundational infrastructure for modern civilization. This invention had a profound effect on the workplace because factories could now have second and third shift workers.

Shoe production was mechanized during the mid 19th century. Mass production of sewing machines and agricultural machinery such as reapers occurred in the mid to late 19th century. Bicycles were mass-produced beginning in the 1880s.

Steam-powered factories became widespread, although the conversion from water power to steam occurred in England earlier than in the U.S. Ironclad warships were found in battle starting in the 1860s, and played a role in the opening of Japan and China to trade with the West.

Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first.[clarification needed ][94]

Mass production brought automobiles and other high-tech goods to masses of consumers. Military research and development sped advances including electronic computing and jet engines. Radio and telephony greatly improved and spread to larger populations of users, though near-universal access would not be possible until mobile phones became affordable to developing world residents in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Birth control also became widespread during the 20th century. Electron microscopes were very powerful by the late 1970s and genetic theory and knowledge were expanding, leading to developments in genetic engineering.

Computers were connected by means of local area, telecom and fiber optic networks, powered by the optical amplifier that ushered in the Information Age. This optical networking technology exploded the capacity of the Internet beginning in 1996 with the launch of the first high-capacity wave division multiplexing (WDM) system by Ciena Corp. WDM, as the common basis for telecom backbone networks, increased transmission capacity by orders of magnitude, thus enabling the mass commercialization and popularization of the Internet and its widespread impact on culture, economics, business, and society.

The commercial availability of the first portable cell phone in 1981 and the first pocket-sized phone in 1985, both developed by Comvik in Sweden, coupled with the first transmission of data over a cellular network by Vodafone (formerly Racal-Millicom) in 1992 were the breakthroughs that led directly to the form and function of smartphones today. By 2014, there were more cell phones in use than people on Earth and The Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that a mobile phone was a private part of a person. Providing consumers wireless access to each other and to the Internet, the mobile phone stimulated one of the most important technology revolutions in human history.

The Human Genome Project sequenced and identified all three billion chemical units in human DNA with a goal of finding the genetic roots of disease and developing treatments. The project became feasible due to two technical advances made during the late 1970s: gene mapping by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers and DNA sequencing. Sequencing was invented by Frederick Sanger and, separately, by Dr. Walter Gilbert. Gilbert also conceived of the Human Genome Project on May 27, 1985, and first publicly advocated it in August 1985 at the first International Conference on Genes and Computers in August 1985. The U.S. Federal Government sponsored Human Genome Project began October 1, 1990, and was declared complete in 2003.

Vaccination spread rapidly to the developing world from the 1980s onward due to many successful humanitarian initiatives, greatly reducing childhood mortality in many poor countries with limited medical resources.

In the early 21st century, research is ongoing into quantum computers, gene therapy (introduced 1990), 3D printing (introduced 1981), nanotechnology (introduced 1985), bioengineering/ biotechnology, nuclear technology, advanced materials (e.g., graphene), the scramjet and drones (along with railguns and high-energy laser beams for military uses), superconductivity, the memristor, and green technologies such as alternative fuels (e.g., fuel cells, self-driving electric and plug-in hybrid cars), augmented reality devices and wearable electronics, artificial intelligence, and more efficient and powerful LEDs, solar cells, integrated circuits, wireless power devices, engines, and batteries.

Large Hadron Collider, the largest single machine ever built, was constructed between 1998 and 2008. The understanding of particle physics is expected to expand with better instruments including larger particle accelerators such as the LHC and better neutrino detectors. Dark matter is sought via underground detectors and observatories like LIGO have started to detect gravitational waves.

New spaceflight technology and spacecraft are also being developed, like the Boeing's Orion and SpaceX's Dragon 2. New, more capable space telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope which was launched to orbit in December, 2021, and the Colossus Telescope, have been designed. The International Space Station was completed in the 2000s, and NASA and ESA plan a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) is an electro-magnetic thruster for spacecraft propulsion and is expected to be tested in 2015.[needs update ]

Breakthrough Initiatives, together with famed physicist Stephen Hawking, plan to send the first ever spacecraft to visit another star, which will consist of numerous super-light chips driven by Electric propulsion in the 2030s, and receive images of the Proxima Centauri system, along with, possibly, the potentially habitable planet Proxima Centauri b, by midcentury.

2004 saw the first crewed commercial spaceflight when Mike Melvill crossed the boundary of space on June 21, 2004.

Civil engineering

Architecture and building construction

Bridges, harbors, tunnels, dams

Surveying, instruments and maps, cartography, urban engineering, water supply and sewerage

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The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is one of the categories of world history. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s.

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technology innovative and change warfare

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technology innovative and change warfare

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Artillery, naval gun fire, attack helicopters and fighter craft were the next advanced warfare technologies that were used in killing the enemies. Technology has always been the contributing factor to the advancement and development of war equipment's. They played a significant role in the way war was fought.

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We know that emerging innovations within cutting-edge science and technology (S&T) areas carry the potential to revolutionize governmental structures, economies, and life as we know it. Yet, others have argued that such technologies could yield doomsday scenarios and that military applications of such technologies have even greater potential than nuclear weapons to radically change the balance of power. These S&T areas include robotics and autonomous unmanned system; artificial intelligence; biotechnology, including synthetic and systems biology; the cognitive neurosciences; nanotechnology, including stealth meta-materials; additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing); and the intersection of each with information and computing technologies, i.e., cyber-everything. These concepts and the underlying strategic importance were articulated at the multi-national level in NATO's May 2010 New Strategic Concept paper: "Less predictable is the possibility that research breakthroughs will transform the technological battlefield .... The most destructive periods of history tend to be those when the means of aggression have gained the upper hand in the art of waging war."

As new and unpredicted technologies are emerging at a seemingly unprecedented pace globally, communication of those new discoveries is occurring faster than ever, meaning that the unique ownership of a new technology is no longer a sufficient position, if not impossible. They're becoming cheaper and more readily available. In today's world, recognition of the potential applications of a technology and a sense of purpose in exploiting it are far more important than simply having access to it.

"What keeps me awake at night is, are we going to miss the next big technological advance? And perhaps an enemy will have that.¹"

While the suggestions like those that nanotechnology will enable a new class of weapons that will alter the geopolitical landscape remain unrealized, a number of unresolved security puzzles underlying emerging technologies have implications for international security, defense policy, deterrence, governance, and arms control regimes.

How, when, where, and in what form the shifting nature of technological progress may bring enhanced or entirely new capabilities, many of which are no longer the exclusive domain of any single state, is contested and requires better analytical tools to enable assessment and understanding. Contemporary analyses of these emerging technologies often expose the tenuous links or disconnections among mainstream scholarship on international security, understanding of the military technological innovation and acquisition processes, and fundamental understanding of the underlying science. Currently variables and metrics are neither well-characterized nor well-quantified, particularly for specific-defense related concepts.

Conceptually, technologies can be seen as evolutionarily advancing current capabilities or those pressing to the 'bleeding edge' that enable disruptive, revolutionary capabilities developments. The ability to differentiate or gain insight into such has thus far not been explored or analyzed robustly with respect to strategic implications beyond a technologically-deterministic lens. The novel scientific principles that underlie the character of these uncertain technologies and their convergence with political and social institutions reveal conceptual and empirical confusion associated with assessing the national security implications. There also is palpable confusion over the technical and strategic distinguishability and dominance of prospective offensive and defensive systems.

The widespread enthusiasm for emerging technologies is reflected not only in official rhetoric but is also codified in respective national technology strategies and the global upswing of dedicated funding. Military-related programs in potential peer competitors in Asia (China), in states posing regional security challenges in the Middle East (Iran), in the former Soviet Union (Russia), and in rapidly developing areas (including South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Brazil) offer comparisons for advanced, allied states (U.S., western Europe, Japan, ROK) in order to understand the national meanings, organization, and strategic implications surrounding the development and fielding of emerging technology. As one example of the rhetoric: During a visit to the Kurchatov Institute, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented "This [nanotechnology] could be the key to developing new, modern, and super-effective military systems.²" He later warned of "[a] new round of the arms race is developing in the world," while calling for the development of Russian science, including nanotechnology, which could be used to develop new types of weapons.

Some states, such as China and those in the Middle East, that have devised new technology strategies are experiencing profound economic and societal transitions. But they differ with respect to critical socio-political and economic criteria for national prosperity and competitiveness (e.g., demography, research and development [R&D] infrastructure and sustainment, and resource endowments versus dependence).

Claims for the potential impacts of technology can seem fantastic; at times, differentiating rhetoric from reality can be difficult. Of critical importance in considering the national and international security implications of technology is that anticipated scenarios should be plausible within constraints of physical viability as well as likely within institutional capacities and tacit capabilities.

The extent to which these emerging technologies may exacerbate or mitigate the defense challenges that states will pose in the future to U.S. and regional interests needs to be examined. How, when, where, and in what form the shifting nature of technological progress may bring enhanced or entirely new capabilities, many of which are no longer the exclusive domain of the United States, is contested and requires better analytical tools to enable U.S. assessment, preparation, and response. To better enable new capabilities and to defend the nation against emerging threats in a new security environment, the role of emerging sciences and technology for U.S. defense and foreign policy should be analytically assessed, theoretically-developed, and understood, i.e., how emerging technologies reconcile with or challenge traditional models for national security, e.g., deterrence, offense-defense balance, strategic security, regime theory, and nonproliferation.

The penultimate goal should not be to predict specific new technologies, which is rarely a high-fidelity pursuit except in retrospective cherry-picking of scenarios from favorite science-fiction stories, and one should be skeptical of any one or group that claims thy can do such. The aim should be to develop implementable and executable analytical frameworks to explain variable approaches to the development of strategically significant emerging S&T programs, to understand the impact of emerging technology on security in the 21 st Century, to enable mechanisms for the world to govern the implications of its own ingenuity, and to inform U.S. defense and foreign policies.

In thinking about the future of warfare, one often encounters two ideological camps: those who prioritize the role of technology and those who don't. One must always be cognizant and skeptical of slipping into a technological deterministic mindset. That is the notion that technology alone, or is even the most important factor, can determine the outbreak or outcome of conflict. The wars of the last decade should also remind us that co-option of broadly available commercial technologies may present the most significant operational threat, e.g., cell-phone activated IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, to deny or dismiss the role of technology in effecting the outcome (as well as outbreak) of war and conflict is also perilous. Neither purist ideology is manifested in the operational world. Contemporary analyses often expose the tenuous links or disconnections among mainstream scholarship on international security and war (or strategic) studies, understanding of the defense technological innovation and acquisition processes, and fundamental understanding of the underlying science.

Critically and frequently lacking - in comparative social science and humanities & historically-based studies of emerging technologies - is robust technical security studies, including consideration of the role of tacit knowledge and skills that are not readily quantifiable as part of distinguishing the rhetoric of new technologies from the reality. Critically and frequently lacking - in comparative technical or engineering-based studies of emerging technologies - are consideration of political, historical, institutional, organizational, economic, and social factors.

There is a need to think strategically beyond current challenges. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the nation has struggled - and continues to do so - to deal with the proliferation challenges of new technologically-enabled weapons. Anticipating the types of threats that may emerge as science and technology advance, the potential consequences of those threats, and the probability that new and more disperse types of enemies will obtain or pursue them is necessary. The potential synergies between biotechnology and other emerging technologies, like additive manufacturing and the cognitive neurosciences, not only suggest tremendous potential for advancement in technology for military applications but also raise new concerns. When asked what are the current approaches and thinking on means for deterring emerging technologies of concern (beyond cyber) to the U.S., then-USSTRATCOM Commander General Robert Kehler (USAF) responded that "surprise is what keeps me up at night" and cited current uncertainty in how to assess and address emerging and disruptive technologies.

In the global information age, the most technologically advanced military power no longer guarantees national security. Globalization and the information revolution, including the Internet and other communication leaps - have led to much greater visibility into the availability and potential for science and technology. Science is and will continue to enable new technological developments becoming accessible and affordable to a larger number of nations and within the grasp of non-state actors: advanced technology is no longer the domain of the few. Understanding these changing paradigms and the implications for modern warfare starts with an awareness of the factors driving the capabilities, understanding the underlying science and the challenges of foreign policy, considering the changing nature of technological progress and the changing nature of conflict, and the relationship between science and security domestically and internationally. The importance of bridging the technical and the human domain is increasing; the challenges are organizational, strategic, and enabling the right people to implement and execute it.

Photo credit: Time Magazine

¹General Robert Cone, Commander US Army TRADOC, from Mike Morones, "Interview with GEN Robert Cone," Defense News, 16 December 2013.

²Reuters, "Putin Promotes Nanotechnology in Russia," 18 April 2007.

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Science, Technology, and the Future of Warfare - Modern War Institute

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We know that emerging innovations within cutting-edge science and technology (S&T) areas carry the potential to revolutionize governmental structures, economies, and life as we know it. Yet, others have argued that such technologies could yield doomsday scenarios and that military applications of such technologies have even greater potential than nuclear weapons to radically change the balance of power.

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Whether it's practical (like washing machines, tumble dryers, refrigerators, cars, flooring materials, windows, or door handles) or for leisure (like televisions, Blu-ray players, games consoles, reclining chairs, or toys), all these things are examples of technology.

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You see, with the growth of the older population, there are a ton of companies struggling to meet their needs and create products they will want to use. At least, what they perceive the needs to be.

Personally, I tend to be a little pragmatic when it comes to products. That may or may not be a good thing. But, in terms of real-world aging in place ideas, it is. In the spirit of keeping technology relevant, here are 5 products that are technology you can use right now for aging in place.

Smart phones

Smart phones are everywhere today and older people can experience many benefits from having one. As you've probably heard, there is an app for just about everything. Here are a few things that a smartphone might help an older person do.

Think smartphones are too complicated? get a launcher app that removes the clutter and simplifies the phone's screens. (Samsung phones have Easy Mode built in).

Use a magnifying glass? Turn your phone's camera into one that displays enlarged objects on your phone's screen.

Want to keep track of your blood sugar or blood pressure? There are standalone apps and ones that connect up to monitoring devices.

Like to play games? There are plenty of apps available for brain fitness, dexterity and more.

Need reminders for medication or appointments? There are several apps that can help you do that.

Older people on-the-go might enjoy video chats using Skype or FaceTime with family or friends.

Trying to watch what you eat? There are plenty that offer calorie counting, sodium intake and more.

The number of apps specifically designed for older people is growing as companies work to develop technology that is beneficial to older people.

Automatic lights

Falls are the number one cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries among older adults. And, the older a person gets the more potential there is for a fall. So, it makes sense that one great way to reduce the possibilities of a fall is being able to see your way to the bathroom at night. Make that a reality by installing lights that come on automatically at night when someone goes from the bedroom to the bathroom. These lights should be set to a lower intensity so as not to startle (or blind) a person in the middle of the night.

There are many options available on the market from lights that are part of a home automation system to lights that work independently. The second option is very affordable and easy to install.

Activity and health monitoring

Technology you can use can take many forms. It can offer an additional level of support and assistance for older people and their loved ones, without being intrusive. There are many systems on the market today that can help a loved on stay more independent and help a loved one provide care for that person. For instance, GrandCare and Independa provide activity and health monitoring, while also allowing for communication with loved ones. (Among other features.) Systems such as BeClose and Lively provide activity monitoring to help families know if their loved one is doing OK.

The number of in-home monitoring systems is growing, mainly because it makes sense to help older people stay safe at home longer. They range in functionality, but most provide essentially the same core service. Though, many offer additional services, such as minimal home automation, video conferencing, email and photo sharing.

Tablet computers

Computers are everywhere now and tablets are among some of the most popular. Not only are they convenient, but they also provide a host of benefits for people of any age. Older people can use tablets to video chat with friends and family (and grand kids, of course) on apps such as Skype or FaceTime. There are also apps for tracking appointments, health or medication reminders. You also have the basic abilities to send and receive photos, email, browsing the Internet, listen to music and watch movies.

Automated cabinets

Getting to things that are on top shelves or in the back of cabinets can be difficult for nearly anyone. By installing cabinets that automatically lower (or pull out, if you want lower tech) allows a person to easily reach all the contents. There are several options available in the automated cabinets, which generally lower straight down or out and down.

These cabinets mean no more tip-toeing to reach, which can reduce the chance of falls and sprains. it also means that you can have your cabinets more organized (or organized as you like), since you don't have to place items on one or two shelves so you can reach them.

Technology you can use

So, there you have it. Our five examples of technology you can use right now for aging in place. What do you think? Have any you'd like to add to the list?

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5 Examples of Technology You Can Use Now | Aging in Place Technology

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You see, with the growth of the older population, there are a ton of companies struggling to meet their needs and create products they will want to use. At least, what they perceive the needs to be. Personally, I tend to be a little pragmatic when it comes to products.