During the First World War countries were racing to upgrade their technology and innovate to use in the great war in war it is a tendency to innovate and invent new inventions.
During the first world war an austrian engineer named Lancelot de Mole approached the British authorities with the idea of a tank or "Landships" they were first used in force on 16 September during the Battle of Flers Courcelette and proved to be cumbersome death traps more adept at killing their own occupants than the enemy the inside of the tank was manned by 5 man crew and the engine was smack-dab in the middle of the tank creating a lot of heat which made the inside extremely hot for the crew and the tank traveled at 5 miles per hour but that isnt the only reason. However their potential was undeniable and by July 1918 The Tank Corps was established garnering almost 30,000 members by the end of the war.
Less than fifteen years after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk those new fangled flying contraptions called airplanes were being used for reconnaissance in WW1 along with balloons and airships. The initial plane builds were primitive but necessity did its job and soon both sides were racing to design mono and biplane fighters that could hold heavy bombs and machine guns while maintaining maneuverability.
Produced by the British with mobility in mind were the Vickers gun a heavy calibre machine gun that required a minimum six man team to operate but gained a reputation for absolute reliability and the American invented Lewis gun the Vickers’ lighter but less trustworthy offspring. While most of the war’s casualties were caused by heavy artillery the portability and power of the machine gun made it an effective addition to arsenals on both sides.
poison gas accounted for only a small number of the war’s deaths in total, its effects were pervasive and devastating. First used by the Germans during the Battle of Second Ypres in 1915 gas actually proved largely ineffective as a traditional weapon its success depended not only on the type of gas and the sophistication of its delivery method but also often on the weather conditions on the day.