One of the most infamous World War II inventions is the

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The programmers who worked on the University of Pennsylvania’s ENIAC machine included Jean Jennings Bartik, who went on to lead the development of computer storage and memory, and Frances Elizabeth “Betty” Holberton, who went on to create the first software application. Lieutenant Grace Hopper (later a U.S. Navy rear admiral) also programmed the Mark I machine at Harvard University during the war, and went on to develop the first computer programming language.
In Britain, Alan Turing invented an electro-mechanical machine called the Bombe that helped break the German Enigma cipher. While not technically what we’d now call a “computer,” the Bombe was a forerunner to the Colossus machines, a series of British electronic computers. During the war, programmers like Dorothy Du Boisson and Elsie Booker used the Colossus machines to break messages encrypted with the German Lorenz cipher.
6. Radar

Personnel manning a radar scope during World War II.
Time Life Pictures/US Navy/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The first practical radar system was produced in 1935 by British physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt, and by 1939 England had built a network of radar stations along its south and east coasts. MIT’s Radiation Laboratory, or “Rad Lab,” played a huge role in advancing radar technology in the 1940s. However, the lab’s original goal was to use electromagnetic radiation as a weapon, not a form of detection.
“Their first idea that they had was that if we could send a beam of electromagnetic energy at a plane, maybe we could kill the pilot by cooking them or something,” Wallace says. “The cooking thing wasn’t working, but they were getting bounce-back that they could receive and they had the idea that they could use electromagnetic radiation just like they used sound radiation in sonar. So they started working on radar.”
Radar helped the Allied forces detect enemy ships and planes. Later, it proved to have many non-military uses, including guiding civilian crafts and detecting major weather events like hurricanes.