Innovators, and The Evolution of Mobility

Posted on October 11th, 2005 Posted by Kent Pribbernow

Technology is an indomitable force. Like a perpetual wheel in motion that shapes our destiny; always changing, constantly evolving, and often reinventing itself. In the world of mobile devices, we are witnessing another such change as the transition from purpose-built PDAs to Smartphones take shape. And yet, as increasingly popular as Smartphones are becoming, the concept of a PDA phone remains an idea before its time. I forsee a time when all phones will be Smart devices that replace EVERYTHING from PDAs to MP3 players. Smartphones will become the ultimate universal remote in our daily lives. An indispensable tool that becomes as much a part of us as our clothes. But we’re only at the very beginning of this evolutionary journey.

In many ways the evolution of mobile devices reminds me so much of another great story in the evolution of mobility…the evolution of the tank in modern warfare. Like the first Smartphones, early tanks were seen as impractical, or serving an ill-defined role in combat. An unrefined niche category with limited utility. In World War I where tanks first saw service, they were massive lumbering steel beasts that slugged across the battle field like armored snails in vein support of infantry. While tanks did prove some value in combat, they were simply too far ahead of their time and were easy prey against long range artillery, as the British Army learned at the bloody battle of Cambrai. In the years following, the tank evolved slowly as it’s role on battle field was constantly drawn into question. Conservative war strategists believed that all future wars would mirror that of World War I; a battle space shaped by trench warfare and heavy infantry assaults. And up until the early 1930s most of the world’s great armies designed their entire combat doctrine on developing new ways of breaching trench works and stationary fortifications. World War II would soon prove this fighting doctrine wrong, and completely obsolete. Like all evolutions, innovation and creative genius would change the rules forever, and turn traditional military thinking on its ear.

Throughout the early 1920s brilliant young military officers like Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel, and George Patton had visionary ideas of future battlefields dominated not by infantry accompanied by slow moving tanks, but by fast moving armored divisions equipped with technologically advanced armored fighting vehicles (AFV) designed to rapidly tear through enemy lines in massive flanking manuervers, assuming the classic role of the Cavalry in warfare. Many scoffed at this notion because tanks of the day were slow (top speed on some tanks was a mere 10mph), unstable and unreliable. After all, cutting edge in those days was a Ford Model T, so it was difficult or near impossible to imagine a 40 ton block of steel armed with a 75mm gun turret racing across the fields of Europe at 40mph. But men like Patton knew that one day technology would overcome those hurdles, as it always does, which would completely change the way modern warfare is waged. And in the late 1920s and early 30s this is precisely what happened.

A New York inventor and engineer named J. Walter Christie developed a series of revolutionary tank concept designs that would ultimately give birth to the modern tank we know today. Christie was to armored warfare what Jeff Hawkins was to Personal Digital Assitants. His ideas were nothing short of earth shattering. They embodied all the basic principles that Patton, Guderian, and Rommel had foresaw…speed, agility, maneuverability, and firepower. The “Christie Tank” was so revolutionary that Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union all eagerly copied the design. And for that reason it is no coinicidence that nearly every tank designed by America’s allies and adversaries in World War II bears a striking resemblance to Walter Christie’s tanks design. The Soviet built B-2 tank was a direct clone, and even the later model T34 (arguably the best tank ever designed during the War) was a direct descendant of Christie’s creation.

Sadly, the US government failed to adopt the Christie tank and opted instead to use the Army’s own creations designed by the Bureau of Ordinance. The result of this decision would doom the United States to enter Wold War II with armored fighting vehicles that were a generation behind, and often horribly ill-matched to the German Army’s (Wehrmacht) tanks and combat vehicles. America’s first Medium tank used in the war, which deployed in North Africa in 1942, was the embarrassingly inferior M3 Lee; a turret-less tank that resembled a giant land tortoise. Its main gun, barrowed from the Navy, was hard mounted on the right side of the tank, and could only be turned in one direction, which made this tank an easy target against German tanks. The Lee featured all-rivet construction, and American tank crews soon learned a gruesome side effect of this design. When an M3 was hit by even a glancing shot from German shells, the rivet heads would be sheared off by the concussion, which would propel the bolt stems inside the tank like bullets, killing or injuring the crew.

The M3 Lee’s successor did little to improve matters. Early M4 Sherman models soon earned ominous nicknames by their crews like…“Purple Heart Boxes” and “Ronson” (named after a popular brand of Cigarette lighter that proudly boasted its slogan “Lights the first time”), due to the fact that it’s ammunition storage compartment had a tendency to easily catch fire and explode when hit by German artillery. Germans laughingly nicknamed the Sherman tank “Tommy Cookers” after a field stove carried by Wehrmacht soldiers. Oddly in many ways the relationship between the M4 Sherman and its more advanced German counterparts mirrors that of the battle between PalmOS and Windows Mobile. The Sherman, like PalmOS, was known for its simplicity, versatility, and easy of mass production. German Panzer models like the vaunted Tiger and Panzer IV were incredibly advanced, offering superior firepower, greater complexity, and total superiority over the Sherman. Panzers dominated the battlefield. GIs coined the phrase “Tiger phobia” to describe the typical reaction Sherman tank crews had upon encountering a German Tiger tank on the battlefield…“Get the hell out and run as fast as you can”.

Historians will never know how many brave young American soldiers needlessly lost their lives because of the inferior equipment they went into combat with, but I suspect many lives could have been saved if the United States had adopted Christie’s designs. Ironically, the US finally managed to catch up with the Germans by developing the M26 Pershing tank, which unfortunately didn’t arrive until the last days of the war. Too late to make a difference.

Christie’s innovations are still utilized even in today’s state of the art in fighting vehicles, like the advanced M1 Abrams battle tank used by the United States Army, which features the same suspension system first conceived by Walt.

And so it goes. We’re living in the early infant stages of the mobile computing. The best is yet to come, and some day in a not too distant future we may see devices that combine the features we use today in something the size of an iPod nano. Or perhaps the future is something wearable, like a communicator watch. Whatever that future will be, one thing is for sure…they will contain innovations and ideas first created by pioneers like Jeff Hawkins.