Tanks: Armored Warfare Prior to 1946

Check out this link for a great collection of images of armored cars, tanks and other armored vehicles http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/ My favorite is an 1899 image of a powered four wheel bike sporting a shield and a maxim machine gun – http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/GreatBritain/GB-Armored-PoweredQuadracycle-June1899.jpg

Flanigan and Cowan Armored Vehicles (1850s/1860s)

This link is to an interesting discussion of two 19th century ideas of armored vehicles of John Flanigan and Englishman James Cowan. – http://www.tractortestfriends.com/newsletters/34.pdf

Landships (WWI Tanks)

See the following site for great images of WWI tanks as well as artillery, uniforms, as well as other kinds of vehicles – a great resources for anyone interested in the history of WWI (or in making models of the period).

http://www.landships.freeservers.com/index.htm

Civil War Tank (1860s)

“ALMOST EVERY WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORY HAS inspired valuable innovations in military technology. The Civil War …saw the first major use in the United States of rapid-fire weapons, land and naval mines, observation balloons, and ironclad ships, among other inventions. One of the most farsighted (if impractical) schemes of that conflict was devised in 1862 by an Indianapolis machine-shop owner named Albert E. Redstone. He proposed to build an armorclad, steam-operated “engine of war”—what today would be called a tank. “  See

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2001/1/2001_1_64.shtml

for more on this device.  Redstone’s weapon profiled in this piece from American Heritage.Com sounds suspiciously like the land monitor I featured in an early post – would be interesting to know if Redstone ever built a working model of his device!

From Tractor to Tank

By Niles White

Benjamin Holt was a Yankee immigrant to California whose inventions freed farmers from tedious hand labor and put food on tables around the world. He was a pioneer marketer and exporter of heavy machinery whose tractors boosted America’s reputation for innovation and quality in the early years of this century. His rumbling “caterpillars,” born in agriculture, helped win World War I by hauling artillery and inspiring the invention of the tank …

See

www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1993/2/1993_2_58.shtml

for the remainder of this interesting article.