Necessity is the mother of all inventions, and we have proved that time and time again. Human beings can adapt to new situations and come up with solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. Safe to say that the times of war are one of the most difficult times in human history, regardless of whichever it was. Thankfully, new ideas came, which were not only deemed useful at times of conflict but also even after. These were some of the wartime innovations that changed our lives forever:

Duct Tape

Could you imagine the world without your trusty solve-it-all duct tape? What a scary concept, right? Before the invention of duct tape, soldiers would dip ammunition boxes in wax before sealing them with thin paper tape that had an exposed tab so that they could be easily opened. The problem, however, was that the tape lacked strength which in turn left the soldiers scrambling to open the boxes under fire.

Thankfully, an Illinois ordnance plant worker named Vesta Stoudt came up with a solution. In the 1940s, she was a mother with two sons in the Navy. To help in the war effort, she got a job at Green River inspecting and packing the cartridges used to launch rifle grenades. When she noticed the weak tape, she knew it was a matter of life and death, including the lives of his sons, and she had to do something about it. Her idea was to seal the boxes instead with a strong, cloth-based waterproof tape. When her supervisors didn’t seem to do anything with her idea, she decided to take her concerns to the top. And we aren’t talking about taking things to the top in terms of the plant manager, we meant to the President of the United States. In her letter, she wrote,

You have sons in the service also. We can’t let them down by giving them a box of cartridges that takes a minute or more to open, the enemy taking their lives, that could have been saved… I didn’t know who to write to Mr. President, so have written you hoping for your boys, my boys, and every man that uses the rifle grenade, that this package of rifle cartridges may be taped with the correct tape.