Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World - Softcover

Hambling, David

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9780786717699: Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786717696 ISBN 13: 9780786717699

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2006

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Understanding how business is likely to evolve in the coming years is itself a multi-million dollar business. Plenty of gurus, academics and snake-oil salesmen will tell you all about the future — for a price. What all of these experts often overlook is that the future is already here. Chances are, the products and services we will buy and sell tomorrow are available — to a very limited clientele — at a top-secret research institute near you. Throughout human history war and the threat of war have driven innovation and accelerated the uptake of new technology — from the nomadic warriors who introduced the stirrup and the kebab to the world, to the British Navy's funding of Marconi's new-fangled radio. And since 1945 the relationship between military needs and modern business has grown ever closer, especially in the United States. David Hambling traces the history of this relationship in the modern era and shows how precision eye surgery emerged out of the military quest for a ‘death ray,' how transistors and silicon chips first helped build better bombs, and exactly why the 747 has such a distinctive shape.

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About the Author:

David Hambling is a freelance writer and author living in South London. He writes for New Scientist magazine and the science section of the Guardian newspaper among others, specialising in topics relating to military technology. He also explores the wilder side of science in a monthly column in Fortean Times magazine.

From Booklist:

Hambling surveys technologies developed by military research that ultimately found civilian applications, tracing this war/peace crossover effect from World War II to the present. A British defense journalist, Hambling keeps the data about particular weapons to a level manageable by general readers, who will learn the physical principles of a weapon, and its route into the civilian world. Aerospace technology is the preeminent WWII spin-off and, for better or worse, traceable to Nazi-sponsored research. Hambling's coverage of the German jets and rockets emphasizes their teething problems and military effectiveness. Occasionally widening his commentary to analyze the worth of huge expenditures on military research, Hambling also lightens matters with jaunts into common items (microwave ovens, cell phones, T-shirts, sunglasses) seeded by the global conflict. Although Hambling hesitates to predict what contemporary military R & D will reap for future consumers, he does probe the perimeter of this mostly secret research on items that sound like something out of science fiction, such as vortex rings and pulsed energy weapons. Gilbert Taylor
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