For the Industrial Revolution (which includes the democratization of warfare associated with the French Revolution), I have chosen to look at the Battles of Königgrätz (1866), Omdurman (1898), and Tsushima (1905). At Königgrätz (also known as the Battle of Sadowa), one of the most important stepping-stones toward the creation of the German Reich, t

Fourth, that even with the best strategy, tactics, and technology in the world, no military revolution has ever conferred an indefinite advantage upon its early innovators. Rivals inevitably copy what they can and come up with tactics or technologies to blunt the effectiveness of what they cannot produce or acquire.

radio, radar, and other inventions of the Second Industrial Age.

For the Second Industrial Revolution, which transformed warfare in the 1920s and 1930s and whose repercussions were felt in the 1940s,

satellite navigation systems, and stealth planes

The most obvious impact of the Information Revolution has been felt on the economy, where it has been reshaping one industry after another, much as the First and Second Industrial Revolutions did. Boeing offers a good example. In 1962, it unveiled the Boeing 727 after almost seven years of work by five thousand engineers. Thirty-two years later, in

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY

The blitzkrieg

And, fifth, that innovation has been speeding up. It took at least two hundred years for the Gunpowder Revolution to come to fruition (c. 1500–1700); one hundred and fifty years for the First Industrial Revolution (c. 1750–1900); forty years for the Second Industrial Revolution (c. 1900–1940); and just thirty years for the Information Revolution (c