The Prussian army is the first to adopt a breech-loading rifle, the 'needle-gun' developed by gunsmith Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse

US-born British inventor Hiram Maxim demonstrates the first prototype of his machine gun, using the recoil force to eject the spent cartridge and insert a new one

Frederick Lugard's Maxim machine gun settles a Protestant-Catholic clash in Kampala, the capital of Buganda

The first German submarine, or U-boat, is constructed in a programme to catch up with Britain and France in this area

Britain launches HMS Dreadnought, the first of a massive new class of battleship

In direct response to Britain's new Dreadnought, Germany increases the production of battleships

President Roosevelt sends a fleet of warships on a goodwill tour of the world that also demonstrates US power

US inventor Isaac Newton Lewis patents a lighter version of the machine gun

The Vickers Fighting Biplane No 1 is unveiled in London at the Olympia Aero Show as the world's first purpose-built fighter plane

Winston Churchill is a firm supporter of a new invention, the tank, encouraging its initial development while still at the Admiralty

The French aviator Roland Garros fires a machine gun through the propeller in his fighter plane, using metal plates to deflect any bullets that hit the propeller

Dutch aircraft designer Anton Fokker, working for the Germans, vastly improves the Roland Garros technique for firing machine guns through the propellers of fighter planes

German fighter planes are armed with new machine guns synchronized to fire between the revolving propeller blades

The Germans make their first effective use of a new weapon, the flame thrower, in an attack on the British in the second batte of Ypres

from December - the 225-horsepower Eagle, the first of many Rolls-Royce aero-engines, is used to power British bombers

A Protocol signed in Geneva probibits the use in warfare of poisonous gas and bacteriological weapons

Adolf Hitler's rearmament programme begins to reduce German unemployment, and by 1938 eliminates it entirely

The prototype of the Spitfire, designed by Reginald Mitchell, has its first test flight

Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun is appointed director of Germany's weapon research centre at Peenemünde

German-born US physicist Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt, warning of the potential of an atomic bomb

British engineer Barnes Wallis designs a bouncing and rotating bomb for use against German dams

US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon

The German V-2 rocket is successfully tested by Wernher von Braun and his team at Peenemünde

Enrico Fermi and his team in Chicago achieve the first nuclear chain reaction

The first V-1 flying bombs (or doodlebugs) appear over London, numbering more than 2000 in two weeks