ABSTRACT
Medievalists have noted that from the late thirteenth century onwards, a whole series of critical technological inventions were made in or introduced to Europe, including the compass, the clockwork mechanism, spectacles (ocularia), gunpowder and printing. The twentieth century saw the nuclear revolution, and then that involving precision-guided munitions and the space intelligence revolution, which merged into the much-celebrated revolution in military affairs of the tail end of that century. The first painting of a gun in the Chinese world is thought to be one dating from 1128, while probably the earliest cannon to be depicted and mentioned dates from 1326. The role of technology in warfare is at the centre of the debate about the dates of the military revolution, the great transformation of European and Ottoman warfare under the influence of the gunpowder revolution. The first historian to write about a 'military revolution' was Michael Roberts in 1955.
