The entire technology of radar, which is the ability to use radio waves to detect objects at a distance, had just been invented at the start of the war, but became highly developed in just a few years at sites like the “Radiation Laboratory” at MIT. By allowing people to “see” remotely the idea of “surprise attack” became close to impossible. Radar allowed nations to track incoming air attacks and guide bombers to their targets. Radar signals could also be used for navigation, as a ship or airplane could measure its distance from several radar bacons to “triangulate” its position. Researchers not only constructed the radars, but also created countermeasures. By constructing complicated pieces of electronic equipment, radar engineering also set the foundation for modern electronics, specifically television and computers.
World War II also saw advances in medical technology. Penicillin was not invented during the war (1928), but it was first mass produced during the war, which was the key to making it available to millions of people. While penicillin itself is still used today, it is also the ancestor to the antibiotics that we take today to keep simple infections from becoming life-threatening illnesses. The science and technology of blood transfusions were also perfected during World War II, as was aviation medicine, which allowed people to fly safely at high altitudes for long periods. Studies of night vision, supplemental oxygen, crash helmets, and safety belts were born from aviation medicine.
Chemical labs cooked up a host of new technologies, from new types of explosives to incendiary bombs (including napalm, a form of jellied gasoline heavily used in Vietnam, but first used on the Pacific island of Tinian against the Japanese), flamethrowers, and smoke screens. New materials and new uses for old materials appeared as well. Companies manufacturing consumer goods (such as silverware) converted to manufacture military goods (such as surgical instruments). Automobile factories re-tooled to make tanks and airplanes. These industrial modifications required rapid and creative engineering, transportation, and communications solutions. Because of the need to put most resources into the war effort, consumers at home experienced shortages and rationing of many basic items such as rubber, gasoline, paper, and coffee (the country imposed a national “Victory” speed limit of 35 miles per hour to save wear on tires—natural rubber being in short supply since the Japanese had occupied much of Southeast Asia). Consumers had to conserve, or just do without. Women’s skirts were made shorter to save material and bathing suits were made out of two pieces (these later became known as “bikinis,” named after an island in the Pacific where the army tested atomic weapons). The 3M company felt compelled to run advertisements apologizing to homemakers for the scarcity of Scotch tape in stores across the country; available supplies of the product had been diverted to the front for the war effort. 3M promised "when victory comes “Scotch” cellulose tape will be back again in your home and office."
New materials emerged to fill these voids; many had been invented just before the war but found wide use during World War II: plastic wrap (trademarked as Saran wrap) became a substitute for aluminum foil for covering food (and was used for covering guns during shipping); cardboard milk and juice containers replaced glass bottles; acrylic sheets were molded into bomber noses and fighter-plane canopies; plywood emerged as a substitute for scarce metals, for everything from the hulls of PT boats to aircraft wings. The look and feel of 1950s America – a “modern” world of molded plywood furniture, fiberglass, plastics, and polyester – had its roots in the materials innovations of World War II.
And of course we’re all familiar with the Atomic Bomb, two of which were dropped on Japan to end the Pacific war in 1945. In a pioneering effort, the United States mobilized a massive cadre of scientists, engineers, and industrial plants. Two cities were selected to house processes integral to the bomb’s development. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was surrounded by 59,000 acres of farmland and wilderness. The workers here separated out uranium for the bomb. In Hanford, Washington, the city was chosen for its 500,000 acres of isolated land bordering the Columbia River. Here workers created the new element plutonium. Atomic weapons are so complicated, in terms of the physics, and so difficult to build, in terms of the technology, that two different types of weapons were built, to increase the chances of getting at least one of them right. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a uranium-type bomb, and the one dropped on Nagasaki used plutonium. Scientists in Nazi Germany were working on an atomic bomb as well. But without the huge commitment of resources that the American government offered its scientists, they barely got out of the starting gate. The Atomic Bomb was like radar in that a small number of devices could make a major impact on military operations, so the new invention could have an effect before going into full scale mass production. By contrast, most conventional weapons took so long to mass produce that if they were not at least on the drawing board when the war started they often arrived too late to impact the war. It is notable, however, that the speed with which new weapons systems came on-line, from the drawing board to the factory floor to the battlefield had never before been seen.
In conclusion, World War II was the first “high tech war,” if we define that modern phrase to mean a war fought with new technologies that were specifically invented for that particular war. The atomic bombs were but the most visible of thousands of small inventions, from materials in the home to training films to new ways of seeing the enemy that contributed to the war effort. The organization of this great war of invention had lasting effects, setting the stage for our “national innovation system” to this day – where the country employs the talents of scientists and engineers to help solve national problems. Moreover, the inventions of World War II can be found in so much of our daily lives, from Saran wrap to computers and large-scale production and shipping of industrial products. Even our education system, the very way we train people to use new technologies, finds some of its origins in World War II. Sometimes it might seem lamentable that so much of our noblest energy – scientific and engineering creativity – goes into humanity’s most destructive activities. But like it or not, technology and war continue to be intertwined. The fields of science and math and the technology that their study produces is not restricted to any one country or side in a war. Scientific and technological progress served both sides in WWII. Both sides poured national resources into developing new and better weapons, materials, techniques for training and fighting, improvements in transportation, medicine, nutrition, and communications. Science and math also know no morality. Alone, they can exist in pure form, devoid of practical use for good or bad. It is only when people apply their actions, desires, intentions to that science and math that they have an opportunity to use them for positive or negative purposes. Each generation of humans can then examine those uses and decide for themselves as a society and as individuals if that science and math was used wisely or not.