7 Scientific Advances That Came out of World War I

World War I is the first war in which motor vehicles played a major role. Ford, for example, delivered some 390,000 trucks to the U.S. Army in 1917. But trucks cannot move without tires, and beginning in 1914 a blockade by the Allies cut off Germany's supply of natural rubber from Southeast Asia.

The German chemical industry rose to the challenge. Bayer's pharmaceutical division had been experimenting with alternatives since 1910, and the outbreak of war prompted the company to start up large-scale production of methyl rubber—Bayer's chemists worked out a way of making this synthetic substitute from lime and coal.

But it was not as good as the natural product. These tires had to be made solid, and the synthetic rubber was only soft when warm; if it got cold overnight, the tires would be left with flat spots where they touched the road, making for a bumpy ride. But while it was a poor substitute, the thousands of tons of synthetic rubber produced were enough to keep the German army rolling. The effort also kick-started an industry that now supplies the bulk of the world's rubber needs.

Blood transfusions had been carried out since before the war, but these were direct from donor to recipient, as there was no way of storing blood. Doctors knew about the requirement for compatibility of blood types, and wounded soldiers died because of the lack of a suitable donor. Peyton Rous, of the Rockefeller Institute in New York, looked for ways of preserving fresh blood and found that a salt solution would do the job, with the addition of sodium citrate to prevent clotting and dextrose as a source of energy.

Capt. Oswald Robertson took the new solution to the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Belgium 1917. Soldiers in camp were willing donors, and flasks of blood could be stored in a portable ice chest for up to 28 days. The stored blood was used in battlefield surgery and was credited with saving many lives. This was the first blood bank and paved the way for modern blood storage techniques.

The submarine emerged as a major threat during WWI, with German U-boats sinking some 5,000 Allied merchant ships. Depth charges were developed to attack them, but the big challenge was simply locating a submerged submarine.

There was some success with hydrophones, or directional underwater microphones, but this method relies on the submarine making some noise—and a stationary sub could be silent. As an alternative, the British Navy's Anti-Submarine Division developed an apparatus for underwater echo ranging using ultrasound, known as ASDIC. A quartz resonator produced a series of pulses that microphones picked up. The delay between the pulse and the echo indicated the distance to an underwater object.

ASDIC was still in prototype form by the end of WWI and too late to be used against the U-boats. But it soon evolved into sonar, which proved vital in WWII. The same technology later gave rise to medical ultrasound imaging and ultrasound therapy.

At the start of WWI radios were big. The U.S. Army's smallest mobile system was the pack set, a radio apparatus that occupied two wooden chests. The entire arrangement, including a hand-cranked generator, required three mules to carry it.

During the war radio became smaller and lighter and better at filtering out static for clear reception. Commanders soon appreciated the potential of radio communication on land, at sea, and even in the air. An official report described a new radiophone for aircraft as "one of the most spectacular achievements of the whole war."

In particular, companies like AT&T—in collaboration with the Signal Corps—made great advances in manufacturing vacuum tubes, or valves, and U.S. industry was producing a million a year by 1918. Better valves meant smaller receivers and more powerful transmitters, opening the way for a new age of popular radio after the war.

Even before the war the Germans realized that British naval dominance would interrupt strategic supplies. Few materials were more strategic than the saltpeter used to manufacture explosives, which was imported as calcite mined in Chile's Atacama Desert.

German chemists discovered that explosives could be made without saltpeter if they could synthesize ammonia. Fritz Haber managed to achieve this almost out of thin air: his process combined hydrogen (from natural gas) and atmospheric nitrogen to produce ammonia. The Haber–Bosch process requires high temperatures and pressure, but it is effective, and by 1913 BASF had set up a plant producing 30 tons of ammonia per day.

The process allowed Germany to fight a war without access to saltpeter supplies. Ammonia is also a key ingredient in making nitrate fertilizers, and, according to some estimates, the Haber–Bosch process now feeds about a third of the world's population. Haber himself won a Nobel Prize for his work . . . even though he was also the man behind the military use of chlorine gas.

The First World War saw the emergence of modern reconstructive surgery, led by New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies. His patients were war casualties, mainly with facial damage from gunshot wounds. Gillies persuaded the British Army Medical Corps to dedicate an entire hospital in Sidcup, Kent, to facial reconstruction. More than 5,000 patients were treated there.

Walter Yeo, a sailor who lost his eyelids in the battle of Jutland, is often described as the first to benefit from advanced plastic surgery. Gillies carried out a new type of skin graft, swinging flaps of skin from undamaged areas to rebuild Yeo's eyelids.

Although many plastic surgeons resisted the pressure to perform cosmetic operations after the war, it was perhaps inevitable that the procedure would grow like wildfire. In 2013 some 11 million cosmetic procedures were carried out in the U.S., in an industry worth some $12 billion.

Although the first fare-paying passengers had flown before 1914, it was the development of larger, multiengined aircraft in WW1 that made airlines possible.

The Handley Page O series was built to strike at Germany, partly in response to zeppelin raids on London. They could carry an impressive bomb load for the time—16 112-pound bombs. More than 500 Handley Page O/400 bombers were produced, and after the war some were converted to passenger use. The fuel tanks, which occupied the fuselage, were moved down into the bomb bay and replaced by 14 wooden seats. Amenities were basic, though passengers did have one item not available on modern airlines—a parachute.

The Handley Page Transport Company flew scheduled service between London and Paris and several other routes, cruising at under 100 miles an hour at 8,000 feet. The German Farman F60 Goliath, also designed as a bomber, was also converted to passenger use after the war and flown by four French airlines.