The Great War - Air, Land and Sea Power Technology

In the first years of the war there were still vestiges of 19th century warfare. For example, cavalry were still used. But the killing power of the machine gun soon rendered such heroics pointless. Artillery too had changed out of all recognition from the pieces that had been used in the last major European conflict, the Franco-Prussian War, which had ended barely 30 years earlier. The infantryman now carried a rifle instead of a musket. The first terror weapon to make its presence felt on the battlefield was gas. But the most enduring weapon to appear during WW1 was the tank. A British invention, it first appeared on the Somme in 1916, and although it made little contribution in those terrible first days, it terrified the Germans, and would prove to be a decisive weapon during the following year, when Germans resistance nearly completely disintegrated during the Battle of Cambrai.