It is known from the course of cultural studies that every phenomenon, including in the field of technology, goes through five (yes, as many as five!) Stages in its development. The first is inception, when no one is still seriously looking at the subject. The second is when a phenomenon or object is already sufficiently known, but is, so to speak, in the process of mastering. The third stage - innovation dominates and becomes commonplace - "oh, who did not know that!" The fourth stage - it becomes obsolete, dies off and is replaced by something new. Fifth, it exists on the periphery of social development.
And so, based on this point of view, can we consider that the war chariots of ancient eras, whether it be the chariots of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, and the peoples of the "Steppe Corridor" - are the forerunners of modern tanks? Most likely not, and here's why. Even in those cases when the horses of these chariots had protective blankets, the protection of the warriors on these chariots remained individual, not group!
The war elephant is a "tank of antiquity", yes or no? And again the same problem: the elephant is in armor, but its "crew" was most often located openly, although there are descriptions of "chained towers" on the backs of war elephants. That is, it is most likely still an armored personnel carrier and, in addition, an armored personnel carrier without a roof. After all, the warriors on elephants did not have collective weapons either. They armed themselves with spears, throwing discs, muskets (in the army at Aurengzeb), bows, but they could not afford even a small cannon, since the elephants were afraid of loud sounds.
There is a point of view that the prehistory of the tank begins in the XIV century, since the drawings of an engineer from Sienna named Mariano to Jacopo (aka Mariano Taccola) have come down to us, depicting a strange design called the "Battle Unicorn". The device was something like a dome that sheltered a small group of soldiers, but they had to carry it on themselves. The collective weapon was the horn of this monster, intended for ramming enemy troops, but what kind of observation means it was on is unknown.
In 1456, the Scottish army appeared to have wooden war chariots, propelled by a pair of horses inside them. But … there was a problem with the roads. And it is clear that the power of the living engine was also insufficient and the inventors understood this. You could try using the wind. And it is not surprising that the idea of a wind turbine was the basis for several projects of combat vehicles at once. In 1472, one such project was proposed by the Italian Valturio, but Simon Stevin (Netherlands), without further ado, came up with the idea of putting a small sailing ship on wheels (1599). I must say that Valturio's project turned out to be more interesting: on the sides of his carriage, he proposed to arrange wings similar to those of a mill. The wind had to rotate them, and they would set his cart in motion through the cogwheels. Needless to say, if such a machine were built, it would - no doubt, make a tremendous impression on contemporaries, but how it would drive across an uneven battlefield is a question.
Well, who does not know that the great Italian artist, scientist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci worked on the creation of a combat vehicle (1500).“I will also arrange,” he wrote, “covered wagons, safe and impregnable, for which, when they crash into the enemy's ranks with their artillery, there is not so many troops that they would not break. And the infantry will be able to follow them unharmed and unimpeded. This text became a textbook, but what is interesting is that when they began to make this car according to the surviving drawings, it turned out that one gearwheel was missing, and it would not go without it. That is, either Leonardo did it on purpose, or simply miscalculated something. Leonardo da Vinci also developed projects for wooden equestrian devices armed with rotating sickles. In some, the horse was in front, in others - in the back, but these, of course, were not tanks.
There is an interesting hypothesis, already expressed today, that Leonardo's "tank" actually had a muscular drive because it was not designed to move across the battlefield, but had to play the role of a mobile tower on the walls of the fortress. In this case, the wall played the role of a "highway" along which, guided by parapets, it had to roll back and forth and come to the aid of the attacked area. However, Leonardo himself does not say anything about this …
In 1558, Kholypuer (Germany) proposed a project for a mobile fortress armed with artillery, which he called "walk-city". However, in fact, his project did not contain anything new, since our Russian "walk-cities" and the Hussite "Wagenburgs" were similar. The latter, however, could participate in a field battle only as a stationary fortification (this is kind of like a tank tower, removed from the chassis and buried in the ground as a long-term firing point), but they could move from place to place and had collective weapons and collective Remedies.
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In 1588, the Italian Augustino Ramelli went the farthest - he offered a protected and armed with cannons cart, which could swim across the water-filled fortress ditches. For movement on water, she was equipped with paddle wheels on both sides of the hull - an amazing engineering solution for that time. But who would rotate these wheels …
Probably, then there were other proposals, until, finally, Voltaire himself offered his "tank" to Catherine II. In August 1769, between him and the Russian ruler began, so to speak, "creative correspondence" from the content of which we can conclude that Voltaire, believing that since in the upcoming Russia war with Turkey, Russian troops will have to operate on the plains, that is, it makes sense to arm them an improved type of war chariot! He even sent her blueprints for his cars, and she seemed to have given instructions to build them. But what happened next, history is silent about this, but there is no information about the action of Voltaire's "tanks" in battles. There is no information about them in the subsequent letters of Catherine to Voltaire.
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By the way, the military engineer Nicola Joseph Cugno (1725 - 1804) in 1771 built as many as three steam cars, one of which was intended to transport cannons. Voltaire may have known about the trials of these machines in Paris. And it would be enough to combine these two inventions of Voltaire and Cugno to get at least something remotely similar to a tank. But that never happened.
But the Japanese, after the Meiji revolution, created their own "mechanism", which is considered the prototype of the tank, although it is still horse-drawn. It was an armored turret with embrasures that could be removed from the chassis and used as a bunker. However, it was possible to fire through the embrasures on the move. So there is armor (collective defense), although the weapons are also individual. So this is not a tank either!
And the car of Frederick Simms is again a “car”, a BA, but also not a tank and the palm in this case will remain with “Little Willie”, even if he never got to the front!
Colored drawings by A. Sheps.
