By: Robert Digby
Robert Digby, U.S. Army, Sergeant First Class (SFC)
The United States has a deep history that stretches back nearly 250 years. Over that time frame there have been a variety of events that have been pivotal to the development of our country and that have shaped the future in which we now live. Because of this, it can be difficult to choose only one time to go back to, but as an aspiring mechanical engineer, the time I would like to travel back to would be World War I from 1914 to 1918, not to experience the war itself, but the buzz of new ideas as the world enters a new era dominated by a scientific revolution.
World War I saw immense growth in a variety of areas in engineering, most prevalently, aeronautics. This conflict saw some of the earliest applications of aircraft in war, which led to the rise of new problems that required solutions. The urge for efficiency and effectiveness pushed our knowledge of mechanics to its limit, expanding the fields of physics and engineering in substantial ways. The problem of the aircraft is so complex that even today we are still unsure as to what exactly causes flight. While we have narrowed our predictions and discovered many of the factors, the best we have can only be described as a glorified theory, not a perfect explanation. The holes in our modern knowledge makes me excited to experience the evolution of flight first hand, hearing the excitement as citizens witness the marvel of these machines and engineers work tirelessly to improve their designs. Seeing the early stages of this checkpoint in human history gives a new appreciation for how far we have come, and only encourages us to continue pushing the limits of what is possible.
World War I also influenced the development of radio technology, something so pivotal to our everyday lives that the world depends on its functionality; from banking
transactions, phone calls to the application for this scholarship, radio keeps the world spinning. I would love to experience the progress of such technology firsthand, seeing how the great inventors of the time managed to overcome the early issues with the technology, their thought process for finding solutions, and the engineering they had to go through to make it practical for use in war and eventually our everyday lives. It can be appealing to want to jump to working on the modern systems we have, but taking a step back to see the earliest and most fundamental stages of our modern technology gives a new perspective on the challenges we face, and how far we still have yet to go.
World War I contains the birth of many incredible feats of science, which is why I would want to travel to that time. Getting to experience such basic versions of the modern world reminds us to appreciate how far we have come, and look forward to the many more incredible developments that the United States will see in the future.
