Was the machine gun the most revolutionary weapon?

[buritobr]

The firearms were used in Europe in the first time in the 14th century. The first firearm was the cannon. Then, in the 16th century, individual firearms were introduced in the warfare. First, the musket, and many years after, the rifle.
However, even in the 19th century wars, like the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War and the Franco Prussian War, when the armies used cannons, muskets and rifles, the battles looked like the classic definition of battle. Two armies met and fought in formation. The duration of this fight was not more than one day. The battle ended when one of the armies was destroyed. The range of the weapons was not big, the sight was not good, it used to take time to reload. So, not all soldiers used to die because of the bullets. The opposing armies had enough time to meet each other. The bayonet was a very important army, since five centuries after the use of the first firearm, the hand to hand combat was not abolished.
Everything changed in the WWI. Because of the machine gun, it was not possible to stand up and shoot anymore, in order to not expose your own body to the enemies' bullets. It was necessary to lay down in order to shoot. The formation became obsolete. Marching became only a cerimony. One could not talk about "battle" anymore. The Battle of Somme and Battle of Verdun were not battles according to the classic definition.
Tanks were important, but they were introduced only in 1916. So, I think that the most important weapon to change everything in the warfare was the machine gun.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Actually, I'd say it was the internal combustion engine that was the most revolutionary weapon.  By making the transport of men and material much easier than either horsepower or the railroads could achieve it made possible the continuous front from the Channel to Switzerland.  The Western Front wasn't that different from what happened at the "Siege" of Petersburg in the American Civil War. The muzzle-loading Minie-ball rifle was just as effective as the machine gun ever was in providing a defense effectively impenetrable by infantry. On the Eastern Front in World War I, where there wasn't ever sufficient manpower to create the continuous front, it was still possible to conduct a war of maneuver.

[dead0man]

Good points, both of you.  I'll add some more options.....

Gunpowder, totally changed how wars are fought....but the change was fairly slow.

Quality roads, Rome could move men and sh**t around their empire at speeds contemporary powers could only dream of.

Rail, played huge roles in the US Civil War, WWI and to a lesser extent WWII.

Flight, obvious.

E=mc², also obvious.

Iron working, the saddle, the stirrup, the bow/arrow, hygiene, rifling, domestication of the horse/camel/elephant, math...so many good options.

[/]

I could see this being true.

But then again, the atomic bomb was pretty revolutionary...

[Cory]

I would say the gun itself.

Let me put it this way: It's objectively easier for a random person to learn how to use a gun effectively then to sword-fight effectively. This created a dynamic where any peasant could kill a trained and experienced knight with relative ease. This in turn created the need for vast conscript armies in which the elite troops weren't that much better then the recruits.

You can see how this leads into other political changes as the governments become more dependent on the will of the average citizen to fight the war.

[dead0man]

I would say the gun itself.

Let me put it this way: It's objectively easier for a random person to learn how to use a gun effectively then to sword-fight effectively. This created a dynamic where any peasant could kill a trained and experienced knight with relative ease. This in turn created the need for vast conscript armies in which the elite troops weren't that much better then the recruits.

You can see how this leads into other political changes as the governments become more dependent on the will of the average citizen to fight the war.

The funny part is that the people that thought you had to spend a lot less time training soldiers 'cause now they all got guns were so freaking wrong.  Sure, it's fairly easy to train somebody how to load and fire a gun, but it's pretty easy to teach a dude to swing a sword too.  You train that dude with a gun and his 9 buddies for several months, they can now take on 50 dudes that know how to point and shoot and not much else and win.  No matter how well trained 10 dudes with swords were, they were going to have hard time beating 50 dudes with swords.  10 dudes with guns and training can take on a force 10 times their size.

It's kind of stupid that it took us several hundred years to figure that out (and many places still haven't figured that out).

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Compared to a bow and arrow, working a gun is relatively simple. Comparing a ranged weapon to a melee weapon doesn't make much sense.

[Murica!]

It's generally accepted that the brick is the most revolutionary weapon.

[dead0man]

Compared to a bow and arrow, working a gun is relatively simple. Comparing a ranged weapon to a melee weapon doesn't make much sense.

The second part, sure.  The first part, I'm not so sure of.  Go to the deepest darkest Amazon (assume someplace that's never used the bow), hand several of them bows and arrows, hand another group a bunch of modern assault rifles and magazines.  Explain that these are weapons and the first group to figure theirs out gets some white women and soda pop.  It seems to me the bow/arrow would be much easier to deduce it's use.  Sure, if you give them both a tiny bit of training the gun group would be much more effective, but that doesn't make it "simple".

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Understanding how a gun works, let alone how to maintain, repair, or build one is less simple than a bow, but when it comes to firing it, it is easier. Guns have a flatter trajectory that makes aiming it easier and it doesn't get any easier than point and click. The only reason why guns were slow to catch on in warfare was that they were slow and fickle.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Instant communication had a tremendous impact and it doesn't seem that anyone has mentioned it so far. The fact that you could read about a disaster in the next day's paper by the end of the Victorian Era, when it took weeks to learn about such at the beginning of the Victorian Era, meant that politicals were directly impacted almost in real time by the situation on the front.

Lincoln also kept in the know by spending large amounts of time at the War Department's telegraph office and thus became in a lot of ways the first modern war time President, who had near real time interaction (delay of a few hours maybe) to prod Generals and so forth. A good example of this is at the end of the war when Sheridan messages Grant that "If the thing is pressed, I think it will surrender" and Lincoln intercedes in the exchange with, "Let the thing be pressed". No prior President had that ability and later developments like the radio would improve both intelligence and communication, important aspects with sprawling battlefields with thousands of men that stretched beyond eyesight, even more so when those numbers reached into the millions.

[dead0man]

Indeed, good points both.  The telegraph and the radio were huge, more so the second I think, especially if you put more weight towards tactics over strategy.  Computers/internet is coming into it's own, but it's all really just an extension of the two you mentioned.

and they're all just an extension of electricity.  So maybe that should be mentioned too.



and everything starts with language, so throw verbal communication on the pile as well....but that started before we were even Homos, hell before we were mammals...so take that back off the pile I guess.