Military Inventions, Civilian Use

With this week’s focus being on networks, the internet, and the military’s creation of digital technologies, we thought that as discussion leaders it might be fun to highlight the different inventions that the Military made that are used regularly by civilians. While the number of these inventions were numerous, the ones that we discussed the most as a class were jetpacks, sanitary napkins, aviators, duct tape and Jeeps.

Prior to this week, I was aware of the military using Jeeps and could see how they were connected with the creation of jetpacks. However, I had no idea how instrumental the military was in promoting the need of having an absorbent material that could be used for soldiers and later women, as well just how fine tuned a style of sunglasses could be. It’s interesting to see just how quickly these new technologies, both digital and analog, were incorporated into society. I’m interested to see what new military technologies are integrated into society moving forward as our digital capabilities continue to evolve.