Every morning, many of us scour the internet on our phones for a bit before popping some breakfast item into the microwave. Then we head to work using GPS and flip on our sunglasses if it's too bright out.
A lot of us likely didn't realize that all those commonplace conveniences were once innovations developed by or for the military.
In the past century, several inventions created by the War Department for warfighter use have become a part of everyday life for civilians. Below are 12 that you may or may not have known about.
The Wristwatch
Prior to World War I, most men carried pocket watches for their time pieces — the few wristwatches that were available were mostly worn by women as jewelry. But as the U.S. joined the war effort, it became apparent that the wristwatch — initially called the "trench watch" — was more practical for soldiers to keep time on the battlefield, where synchronization was crucial for infantrymen and artillery gunners.
The U.S. Army Signal Corps' Engineering & Research Division oversaw the testing of timepieces and the purchasing of wristwatches, which were distributed to soldiers by the Army Quartermaster Corps. Similar versions were distributed to Navy sailors.
Eventually, the civilian world caught on to the convenience. By the end of the 1920s, the wristwatch was outselling the pocket watch by a substantial margin, according to the National World War II Museum.
The EpiPen
While this well-known device for treating anaphylaxis wasn't exactly created by the U.S. military, the technology to do so was.
In 1973, during the Vietnam War, the Army began looking for a way to quickly treat combat troops who were exposed to chemical warfare. The service got a researcher to create an easy-to-use device called an auto-injector — a prefilled, spring-loaded syringe or cartridge that could quickly deliver livesaving antidotes under the skin in high-stress situations when troops encountered weaponized gases.
Soon after, medical experts took note and realized that if they filled these devices with epinephrine, civilians with life-threatening allergies could carry them to quickly treat themselves if they had an allergic reaction.
The epinephrine auto-injector, which became known by its patented name, EpiPen, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1987. Since then, many other medications and treatments now use auto-injector technology for quick and easy use by civilians.
Bug Spray
During World War II, U.S. troops serving in the jungles of the Pacific theater got eaten alive by mosquitos and other insects, many of which carried diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. According to the National Institutes of Health, in 1942 alone, the Army reported that about 1.2 million warfighters suffered from one or both of those diseases.
Conventional treatment methods of the time weren't doing enough to keep the bites away, so in 1944, the War Department collaborated with the Agriculture Department to open a research lab in Florida to develop a new treatment that would better protect troops. It was there in 1946 that the chemical N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide — better known as DEET — was created as an insecticide.
By 1957, DEET had been registered for use by the general public. Since then, it's become the world's most effective and widely used active ingredient in mosquito repellents.
Freeze-Dried Foods
Throughout history, people have used dehydration to preserve food. Dehydration uses heat and airflow to remove moisture, but it can lose nutrients and alter the food's taste and texture. When it came to World War II, dehydrated foods weren't exactly a warfighter favorite, so scientists started to look for ways to make better shelf-stable foods.
At the Army laboratories in Natick, Massachusetts, now known as the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, researchers in the 1950s realized that freeze-drying was a better option because it better preserves the food's structure, nutrients and taste when rehydrated.
By the mid-1960s, freeze-dried foods were being mass produced across the military. They were lightweight and had excellent shelf-life stability without the need for refrigeration. Studies from the 1970s showed that troops actually preferred them to canned foods.
As their military popularity increased, so did commercial interest. Today, freeze-dried foods are common on grocery store shelves, while snacks for camping and backpacking are filled with various freeze-dried items such as beef stew, pasta dishes and even scrambled eggs.
Aviator Sunglasses
In the early years of aviation, pilots wore goggles that were heavy and awkward. So, in the 1930s, Army Air Corps Col. John Macready worked with a company to develop a new type of face wear to help deflect sunlight in the cockpit.
By World War II, photos showed warfighters everywhere, including famed Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, wearing the sunglasses. Civilians wanted to get in on the look and clamored for them. Over the years, the glasses and various off-brand versions became known as aviators. They've been a popular symbol of "cool" ever since and are still worn by pilots around the world.
Radar
In 1922, Navy radio engineers Albert Taylor and Leo Young started looking for new radio frequencies for communications, so they tested a new, high-frequency transmitter and receiver that they set up across the Potomac River from their office at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory in Washington. During the tests, Taylor and Young noticed that a steamer ship cruising the river pinged on their equipment more strongly as it got closer, then diminished as it moved away.
The pair wanted to develop the technology further to help detect enemy warships in battle, but unfortunately, their superiors weren't interested, so the project was shelved. Years later, in 1930, Young noticed similar effects while testing aircraft communications capabilities. He recruited Taylor and a new engineer, Lawrence Hyland, to continue their experiments after finally getting the Naval Research Laboratory's consent.
In late 1934, when other labs were trying to create similar technology, the trio applied for and received a patent for what they called "radio detecting and ranging" — radar, for short. By the spring of 1936, it became a high priority for shipboard use.
In December 1938, the battleship USS New York was the first to be equipped with the latest in radar, which could identify aircraft nearly 50 miles away. Radar had finally come into its own, and it went on to become a major factor in many naval victories during World War II, including in the battles of Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal.
In the decades since, radar has spread into all factors of civilian life as well, from tracking weather and monitoring traffic speed to operating automatic doors and clocking pitches in baseball.
The Microwave Oven
Thanks to the aforementioned invention of radar, we have the microwave oven — something that military engineer Percy Spencer accidentally created shortly after World War II ended.
Spencer was working for a defense contractor on a magnetron, which produces the vibrating electromagnetic waves that make radar possible. During one experiment, he noticed that the device had melted a candy bar in his pocket. He found that interesting, so he continued his testing on an egg and popcorn, discovering that the device could cook food way faster than a conventional oven.
The company went on to produce and market the first commercial microwave oven in 1947. However, it took about 20 more years for it to be small enough and affordable enough for the average family to buy.
Duct Tape
While duct tape wasn't exactly created by the military, it was created for the military.
During World War II, Vesta Stoudt, a mother of two Navy sailors, worked in a factory packing munitions for the war effort. The paper-and-wax seals they used on the boxes weren't very efficient, so she thought it might be better to use a new type of cloth-based tape instead. The product was nicknamed "duck tape" because of its water-resistant properties and the fact that it was made from cotton duck cloth, a type of canvas fabric.
Stoudt's supervisors and government inspectors liked her idea, but they never followed through with its implementation. So, Stoudt wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt detailing her idea in the hopes that he would like it. He did like the idea, so he passed it along to the War Production Board, which set the ball in motion to get the product rolled out. Warfighters ended up loving the tape and used it for much more than boxes — they even used it to bandage wounds.
While there were versions of the tape prior to Stoudt's discovery, her persistence led to the modern-day version and its commercialization after the war. The product eventually became known as "duct tape" when it hit the civilian market because it was often used to patch up heat ducts.
Penicillin
Penicillin was the first commercialized antibiotic to treat infections from surgeries and wounds during World War II. While the British are credited with discovering its potential, the U.S. military is the one that realized it would be critical to saving warfighters' lives.
During the war, the War Department mobilized resources for the large-scale production that was necessary to get penicillin to the masses, including funding research, coordinating efforts with pharmaceutical companies and facilitating clinical trials. That effort made it possible to make a widely available treatment that reduced battlefield deaths from infections.
Nowadays, penicillin is used to treat commonplace bacterial infections such as strep throat, pneumonia, ear infections, staph infections, Lyme disease and more.
Sanitary Pads
They might be a sensitive topic for some, but sanitary pads have become an essential part of life for women. However, they weren't always. Prior to World War I, most women on their menstrual cycle relied on homemade cloth pads, which were inconvenient and messy.
Cotton shortages during the war led a manufacturing company to develop a new product called Cellucotton, which was made of wood pulp and was five times more absorbent than cotton. It was also cheaper. When U.S. troops went to war in Europe, they began using Cellucotton to treat wounds, but nurses there also began using it as sanitary napkins.
After the war, the company learned what the nurses were doing, and they decided to redistribute Cellucotton into a commercial product for women everywhere. Sanitary pads were introduced to the public in October 1920 and became hugely popular, making them one of the biggest consumer success stories in America.
GPS
At this point in time, very few people would know how to get around without using the satellite-based navigation called Global Positioning System — commonly known as GPS. It's now an everyday thing thanks to the military.
In 1973, the War Department tasked the Air Force with finding a reliable, accurate means of electronic navigation to upgrade warfighters who were using paper maps and specialized tools like sextants and chronometers. Experts decided they could do this with a grouping of satellites.
The first satellite was launched in 1978 for a constellation known as Navigation System with Timing and Ranging — NAVSTAR. The system was initially limited to only the U.S. military and select allies, but that changed in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan decided to release it to the public following an incident in which a South Korean airliner was accidentally shot down by Soviet fighters when it strayed off course. Investigators determined the tragedy could have been avoided had the pilots had better navigation tools.
GPS was first used by the military in combat during the Gulf War in 1990. It took until the mid-1990s for the NAVSTAR constellation to be fully operational with 24 satellites orbiting Earth.
While the Air Force initially created and maintained GPS, the Navy was responsible for developing time navigation, the precursor of NAVSTAR GPS and its foundational concept. TIMATION, as it was called, was conceived in the late 1960s to provide accurate position and time data to land-based navigators. Using synchronized atomic clocks, it measured the time it took a signal to travel from a satellite to a navigator.
While the Space Force now maintains GPS for the military, the Coast Guard operates and maintains the Navigation Information Service for civilian GPS users.
The Internet
The internet was initially known as ARPANET — the acronym for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network that created it in 1969. Military scientists started it to link up with U.S. universities, government agencies and defense contractors during the Cold War. It was a time when the U.S. wanted to build on information sharing and shared computing power, but it wanted to do so without a central command hub that adversaries could potentially target.
The first message conveyed through ARPANET was sent from a University of California, Los Angeles computer to Stanford University that same year. In 1973, the name ARPANET was changed when it was connected to U.S. allies in Norway and the United Kingdom.
Nearly 20 years later, in 1991, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web — the collection of documents and files that we access through the internet — while working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland.
While this article only includes 12 military-inspired innovations, there are so many more that civilians now use in everyday life. From the Jeep and nylons to blood banks and ambulances, there are too many to count. However, you can count on the fact that the military's ability to innovate never stops.