Radar technology played a significant part in World War II and was of such importance that some historians have claimed that radar helped the Allies win the war more than any other piece of technology, including the atomic bomb. During World War II, the ability to produce shorter, or micro, wavelengths through the use of a cavity magnetron improved upon prewar radar technology and resulted in increased accuracy over greater distances. This name of the device-the cavity magnetron-may not be as recognizable as what it generates: microwaves. This device not only proved essential in helping to win World War II, but it also forever changed the way Americans prepared and consumed food. When looking at wartime technology that gained commercial value after World War II, it is impossible to ignore the small, palm-sized device known as a cavity magnetron.
The scientific and technological legacies of World War II became a double-edged sword that helped usher in a modern way of living for postwar Americans, while also launching the conflicts of the Cold War. Added to this, advances in the technology of warfare fed into the development of increasingly powerful weapons that perpetuated tensions between global powers, changing the way people lived in fundamental ways. Wartime medical advances also became available to the civilian population, leading to a healthier and longer-lived society. Technologies developed during World War II for the purpose of winning the war found new uses as commercial products became mainstays of the American home in the decades that followed the war’s end. Of the enduring legacies from a war that changed all aspects of life-from economics, to justice, to the nature of warfare itself-the scientific and technological legacies of World War II had a profound and permanent effect on life after 1945.
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