EVOLUTION OF WEAPONRY

EVOLUTION OF WEAPONRY THROUGHOUT HISTORY:

*400,000 BC:The earliest evidence of humans using spears, in a part of Germany now near Schöningen.However, one population of modern chimpanzees in Senegal uses spears to hunt bushbabies, suggesting the technology may have been used by our most primitive ancestors.

*400,000 BC to 25,000 BC:The atlatl, sometimes dubbed the Stone Age Kalashnikov, throws a flexible dart that can kill a deer at 40 metres. Developed in northern Africa, it spreads throughout the world, being later replaced by the bow and arrow.

*23,000 BC:Boomerangs are strongly associated with Australia’s Aboriginal people, but were actually used as hunting weapons throughout Europe and Africa. Most boomerangs do not come back when thrown .The oldest boomerang yet, 23,000 years, was made from a mammoth tusk and discovered in a cave in Poland

*1368 to1644:China’s Ming Dynasty drives firearms technology forwards. Developments include the matchlock, which eliminates the need to fire a gun with a hand-held match; the musket; and the naval mine. The dynasty’s new technologies are eventually collected in the Huolongjing: a treatise on warfare by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji.

*1750 to 1850's:Rockets become a permanent fixture on the battlefield, having gone in and out of fashion over the centuries.Indian Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu successfully deploys rocket artillery against the British, leading inventor Sir William Congreve to develop his own version, the Congreve rocket.

*1775:The first submarine used in battle, Turtle, is created by American David Bushnell. The technology remains crude and unsafe for many decades, though several subs are used in the American Civil War (1861 to 1865).

*1862:The USS Monitor, the first iron-clad warship, launches from New York.It is designed by Swedish engineer John Ericsson, who had come close to beating steam locomotive Stephenson's rocket in the competition that made it famous. Ericsson subsequently spends many years experimenting with solar power

*1914:During the first world war, the British army introduces the first tanks.

*1942:The Manhattan Project, the United States’ attempt to build the first nuclear bomb, begins under the direction of J.Robert Oppenheimer.

*1952:The first fusion, or hydrogen, bomb is tested by the US in the Marshall Islands.They use X-rays from a nuclear fission explosion to trigger nuclear fusion reaction's between atoms of the hydrogen isotope tritium, like those that take place inside the sun.A single warhead can be thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

*1960 to 2000's:The Soviet Union begins developing a supercavitating torpedo in the 1960s. By exploiting the way water forms bubbles around fast-moving objects the Shkval can travel at 500 kilometres an hour. It is only completed in the early 1990s.The US develop their own in 1997 and 10 years later start working on carrying humans in a supercavitation craft.

*1997:The US carries out its first test of an anti-satellite laser

*2002:For the first time, a high-energy laser is used to shoot down artillery force.The Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP), a laser that can knock you off your feet is developed.