Unseen World!

c. -15,000 years ago

The principle of the bow and arrow is developed, with yew or elm for the bow and points of flint on the arrows

c. -2500 BC

The treasures found in the royal cemetery at Ur include a depiction of soldiers in copper helmets, armed with battleaxes

c. -1800 BC

In Mesopotamia the new weapon is a light chariot, drawn by two horses

c. -1500 BC

The composite bow, accurate to 200 yards, is used by warriors in Asia fighting from chariots and on horseback

c. -1100 BC

The Phoenicians develop the war galley, with a sharp battering ram in the bow

c. -850 BC

The Assyrians develop the battering ram into a mobile and powerful siege engine

c. -800 BC

The Assyrian army makes good use of the new technology by which iron can be hardened into steel suitable for weapons

c. -340 BC

The Macedonians develop the catapult as a siege engine for the armies of Philip II and Alexander the Great

c. -299 BC

The Roman siege technique is improved by the ‘tortoise’ which protects the attacking force

c. -250 BC

The Chinese develop the crossbow, many centuries before its use in Europe

c. 674

A Muslim fleet attacking Constantinople is deterred by the first known use of the Byzantine secret recipe for ‘Greek fire’

c. 1040

A Chinese manual on warfare includes the earliest known description of gunpowder

c. 1139

Pope Innocent III and the second Lateran council outlaw the crossbow as a weapon causing unacceptable devastation

c. 1200

The longbow, a weapon of great use to English armies, is probably first developed in Wales

Sketch of a Welsh archer still shown with a short bow, 13th century

National Archives, Kew

c. 1298

The English longbow, in one of its early appearances, proves too much for the Scots at Falkirk

c. 1327

The earliest surviving illustration of a cannon is drawn in this year (in a manuscript now in Oxford)

c. 1365

Portable guns are introduced not long after artillery, being mentioned in several European texts of the second half of the fourteenth century

c. 1450

The matchlock, ignited from a smouldering length of rope, becomes the standard form of musket

c. 1450

The French bring two small cannon on to the battlefield at Formigny, where they have a significant effect in achieving the French victory

c. 1453

The Turks terrify Constantinople by lobbing vast stones at the city from a 19-ton bombard of cast iron

c. 1610

A flintlock designed in France (possibly by Marin Le Bourgeoys) becomes the standard firing mechanism for muskets

1688

Sébastien de Vauban’s socket bayonet is introduced in the French army

1775

General Gage sends a detachment of British troops to seize weapons held by American Patriots at Concord

1807

A Scottish clergyman, Alexander Forsyth, invents the percussion cap to help in his pursuit of wildfowl

1846

The self-contained metal cartridge, with a percussion cap in its base, is patented by a Paris gunsmith named Houiller

1848

The Prussian army is the first to adopt a breech-loading rifle, the ‘needle-gun’ developed by gunsmith Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse

1884

US-born British inventor Hiram Maxim demonstrates the first prototype of his machine gun, using the recoil force to eject the spent cartridge and insert a new one

1892

Frederick Lugard’s Maxim machine gun settles a Protestant-Catholic clash in Kampala, the capital of Buganda

1905

The first German submarine, or U-boat, is constructed in a programme to catch up with Britain and France in this area

1906

Britain launches HMS Dreadnought, the first of a massive new class of battleship

1906

In direct response to Britain’s new Dreadnought, Germany increases the production of battleships

1907

President Roosevelt sends a fleet of warships on a goodwill tour of the world that also demonstrates US power

1911

US inventor Isaac Newton Lewis patents a lighter version of the machine gun

1913

The Vickers Fighting Biplane No 1 is unveiled in London at the Olympia Aero Show as the world’s first purpose-built fighter plane

1915

French aviator Roland Garros fires a machine gun through the propeller in his fighter plane, using metal plates to deflect any bullets that hit the propeller

1915

The 225-horsepower Eagle, the first of many Rolls-Royce aero-engines, contributes to the British war effort

c. 1915

Fighter planes are newly armed with machine guns firing between the propeller blades

1915

Dutch aircraft designer Anton Fokker, working for the Germans, vastly improves the Roland Garros technique for firing machine guns through the propellers of fighter planes

1916

Winston Churchill is a firm supporter of a new invention, the tank, encouraging its initial development while still at the Admiralty

1925

A Protocol signed in Geneva probibits the use in warfare of poisonous gas and bacteriological weapons

1936

The prototype of the Spitfire, designed by Reginald Mitchell, has its first test flight

1939

German-born US physicist Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt, warning of the potential of an atomic bomb

1942

British engineer Barnes Wallis designs a bouncing and rotating bomb for use against German dams

1942

US physicism J. Robert Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon

1942

The German V-2 rocket is successfully tested by Werner von Braun and his team

1942

Enrico Fermi and his team in Chicago achieve the first nuclear chain reaction

1944

The first V-1 flying bombs (or doodlebugs) appear over London, numbering more than 2000 in two weeks

1944

The first V-2 rocket lands on London, killing three people in Chiswick

1944

Japanese pilots fly the first of World War II’s suicide or kamikaze missions

1945

Napalm, used to bomb a crowded part of Tokyo, creates a firestorm in which 80,000 die

1945

A US destroyer is sunk by a baka, a rocket-propelled version of a kamikaze attack

1945

US scientists succeed in exploding an atom bomb at Alamogordo, a test site in the New Mexican desert

1945

An atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, destroying four square miles of the city and killing 80,000 people

1945

A second atom bomb is dropped from a US plane, this time over Nagasaki

1946

The first of about 20 US tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs is carried out on Bikini Atoll, in the Pacific

1949

The first Soviet atomic bomb, called by the Americans Joe One, is successfully tested in Kazakhstan

1950

In response to the Soviet atom bomb, President Truman announces a crash programme to develop a hydrogen bomb

1951

The first hydrogen bomb is successfully tested by the US at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands

1953

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb is successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan

1962

US intelligence reveals nuclear missile bases under construction in Cuba, causing an international crisis

1962

A deal between President Kennedy and Soviet premier Khrushchev defuses the Cuban missile crisis

1972

The SALT 1 treaty is signed by the US and USSR, limiting anti-ballistic missiles

1983

President Reagan proposes a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) against nuclear attack

1988

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein uses chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq

2005

The Provisional IRA announces a formal end to armed conflict and orders units to dump all their weapons

2006

North Korea test-fires seven missiles, of varying ranges and with varying success

2006

North Korea announces that it has tested a nuclear weapon

2007

China carries out a successful test of a ground-based missile that can destry satellites in orbit

2007

North Korea agrees to begin shutting down its nuclear facilities in return for an ongoing programme of fuel aid