World War 1 began due to the assassination of “Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914” 1. Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia, who the assassination was traced to, that same day, starting the first world war 1 2. Germany supported Austria-Hungary, while Russia sided with Serbia, as they did traditionally 1. Germany later invaded Luxembourg and Belgium, the French invades Alsace, and British forces arrive in France 2. On August 10th, Austria-Hungary invades Russia 2. On September 9th, “Allied forces halt German advance into France during First Battle of the Marne.” 2 On February 18th 1915, Germany did a naval blockade of Great Britain 2. “Allied forces land on the Gallipoli Peninsula of the Ottoman Empire.” 2. A German submarine sinks the passenger liner during a crossing from New York to Liverpool, which killed 128 Americans 2. On May 23rd, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. On February 21st 1916, Germany began the attack on Verdun 2. On July 1st, the battle of the Somme begins 2. On December 18th, the Battle of Verdun ended with “550,000 French and 450,000 German casualties” 2. On April 6th 1917, the United States declares war on Germany 2. On March 21th 1918, Germany begins it’s final offensive of the war 2. On May 28th 1918, US forces are victorious in the battle of Cantigny, which is the first independent American operation 2. On November 11th, 1918, Germany signs the Armistice at Compiègne, ending WW1 2 .
“The automobile was first invented and perfected in Germany and France in the late 1800s, though Americans quickly came to dominate the automotive industry in the first half of the twentieth century.” [3] Henry Ford had innovated mass-production techniques, which later became the standard [3]. Manufacturers funneled their resources to their military during WW2, which led to the automobile production in Europe and Japan growing afterwards. [3] The number of active automobile manufacturers dropped from 253 in 1908, and all the way to 44 in 1929, with around 80% of the industry’s output accounted by Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. [3]
In 1926, Germany was working on the Focke Achgelis Fa 61, which had two 3-bladed rotors mounted on outriggers and was powered by a 160-horsepower radial engine. [4] It set numerous records. [4] For example, in 1938, it had set a record for an altitude flight of 11,243 feet and a cross country flight of 143 miles. [4] In that same year (1938), the German aviator Hanna Reitsch became the world’s first female helicopter pilot by flying the Fa 51 inside Deutschland-Halle in Berlin. [4] Germany continued helicopter development during WW2 and had become the first to place a helicopter (the Flettner Kolibri) into mass production. [4]
In 1940, David Packard and Bill Hewlett found their company in a Palo Alto, California garage. [5] Their first product was the HP 200A Audio Oscillator which rapidly became popular for engineers. [5] In 1942, the Z3 was built by German Engineer Konrad Zuse who was working in isolation. [5] It uses 2,300 relays, preforms floating point binary arithmetic, and has a 22-bit word length. [5] The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1943. [5] Konrad Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of it in the 1960s and is currently on display at Deutsches Museum in Munich. [5] In 1943, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer is completed. In a result, Atanasoff was declared the originator of many basic computer ideas, however, the computer as a concept was declared unpatentable and so it was freely open to all. [5] A replica is currently on display at the Computer History Museum. [5] In 1949, the first computer program ran on a computer, the Manchester “Baby”. [5] It was built to test a new memory technology which was developed by Williams and Killburn. [5] It was the first high-speed electronic RAM for computers. [5] The program consisted of 17 instructions which was written by Kilburn.