In 1335, Guido da Vigevano suggested a battle car. He was to be followed in 1484 by artist engineer Leonardo da Vinci, who suggested a similar contraption, no doubt like other visionaries contemplating and designing tools of battle, hoping for extra income and public recognition.
In 1838, John George and his son in Cornwall wrote a petition to the House of Commons proposing that their design of a “modern steam chariot” be considered for manufacture and purchase by the British Military.
In 1912, Lancelot de Mole’s submitted his tanks design to the War Office. DeMole’s tank was more maneuverable than early British variety. It incorporated a piece of mechanism that simplified the handling of the tank and enabled it to be steered in a comparatively sharp turn. It also had climbing face at both the front and back which enabled the tank to back out of trouble, which the early British tanks could not do.
The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defense, championed the idea of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory.
By December 1914 the Royal Navy introduced a new, turreted design that set the standard for armored cars until the end of the war. Built on high-powered touring car chassis with relatively thin armor they were fast and reliable, even if the brakes weren’t very good but in the end trenches and mud rendered them almost useless on the Western Front.
On September 6, 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. Tanks produced during WWI were characterized by a rather low degree of mobility (the maximum road speed was less than 10 km/h and range was fairly limited).
During the First World War, the British and the French spearheaded tank development. The Mark I (“Mother”), Mark II and Mark III and eventually Mark IV (heavy tank, of which more than 1,200 were built) and then the Mark V became trademark British First World War tanks.
History invention of tanks
