TECHNOLOGY OF WWI
The Flamethrower was by no means an innovative weapon in WWI, the first flamethrowers having been invented over 2000 years before the war. However, during WWI it was first used as a genuine tool for mass destruction, one that would result in the bloody death of thousands of troops. A flamethrower expels a jet of flame onto an enemy, by igniting pressurised fuel. The early WWI flamethrowers were developed by the Germans, and the portable, and most deadly version they created was called the Kleinflammenwerfer. It was first notably used in surprise attacks in Flanders, and its close-range efficiency resulted in horrific deaths for many troops in the frontline trenches, where there was nowhere to run from the flames. Both the British and the French also experimented with even more powerful flamethrowers in the war, but it was the Germans who utilised it the most, conducting 650 flamethrower attacks throughout the war. Since then, flamethrowers continue to be a powerful weapon, used on tanks in WWII, and in the form of even more portable versions in combat since.
The Mills Bomb is a cultural and military icon that still retains prominence today. We know it as a "frag (fragmentation) grenade", but the first prominent type of these grenades were called "Mills Bombs". They were produced by the British in WWI, and were incredibly damaging. Designed to be thrown at long range at an enemy, the "pineapple" shape of the grenade resulted in an unpredictable shower of fragments that would damage enemies in a large radius of 100 yards. During the war, the grenade underwent numerous modifications, taking out its seven-second fuse length for a shorter fuse, and altering its shape, but it still remained powerful and very deadly. The hand grenade saw even more use in WWII, and is still used frequently today in modern conflicts, having changed very little for over a hundred years.
Room 40 was a highly secretive group responsible for cryptoanalysis in WWI. Formed by the British Admiralty in October 1914, its job involved intercepting thousands of coded messages by German radio stations, U-boat transmissions, and other German forms of naval communication, and deciphering them using captured German codebooks and secret maps, mostly passed on to the British through their ally, Russia. Formed by Alfred Ewing, this group, which evolved from just a "room" to a huge operation of mathematicians and code breakers, helped prepare the British Navy for several surprise attacks, giving them an advantage at crucial battles such as the Battle of Dogger Bank, and the Battle of Jutland. It was, in many ways, a crucial precursor to other cryptoanalysis groups and organisations, such as the far better-known Bletchley Park of WWII. After the war, Room 40 was deactivated in 1919, but many of the staff there transferred to Bletchley Park and played a huge part in codebreaking in WWII.
The Dreyer Table is one of the earliest uses of digital technology in naval warfare. It was, essentially, a computer that suggested the optimum position and rotation for a ship's guns to hit an enemy target. The Dreyer Fire Control Table, as it was officially named, was a compact and complicated piece of equipment, literally an iron table upon which sat several different mechanical and mathematical devices, requiring dozens of people to operate. It would take in several different factors, such as wind speed, own ship's speed, and the range of the target. It would then output data, such as the range of the ship's gun and the amount of gun deflection, which would then be transmitted to the gunner, enabling him to fire a perfect shot on target. The Dreyer Table was extremely complicated, and although not necessarily bulky, was fiddly and expensive. Despite it being highly useful and very accurate for its time, it was only deployed on large ships that needed to accurately hit their shots first time. It was more important in paving the way for electric targeting machines of the future, spawning a new, exciting era of naval warfare, one filled with detailed machinery and precise, speedy calculations, instead of best-guesses and estimations.
The Hydrophone is a microphone used specifically for recording sounds underwater. It has been used for conservation efforts, for startling effects in David Attenborough's "Blue Planet", but has a slightly less obvious, but far more professional use as a tool in naval warfare. A French physicist, Paul Langevin first developed the hydrophone early in the war. The hydrophone, despite the noise of the ship it was being carried on, was incredibly successful in detecting German submarines, often giving officers the data to accurately predict their bearings. They were used more frequently on larger ships towards the end of WWI, and continued to be updated to provide a crisper sound, and be sturdier. Hydrophones were replaced by an even more accurate naval tool, sonar, but still see use in the present day, particularly for environmental research, and for media purposes.