Military
Some instruments, such as telescopes and sea navigation instruments, have had military applications for many centuries. However, the role of instruments in military affairs rose exponentially with the development of technology via applied science, which began in the mid-19th century and has continued through the present day. Military instruments as a class draw on most of the categories of instrument described throughout this article, such as navigation, astronomy, optics and imaging, and the kinetics of moving objects. Common abstract themes that unite military instruments are seeing into the distance, seeing in the dark, knowing an object's geographic location, and knowing and controlling a moving object's path and destination.
Special features of these instruments may include ease of use, speed, reliability and accuracy; nevertheless additionally one might hope seeing them as instruments whose existence, not use, ultimately helps in establishing a humane and humanistic peace between individual humans as well as groups of them.
Read more about this topic: Measuring Instrument
Famous quotes containing the word military:
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)