EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

'Chariots of Fire': The Evolution of Tank Technology, 1915-1945

Carolina Castaldi, Roberto Fontana and Alessandro Nuvolari

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: We revisit the notion of technological trajectories by means of a detailed case-study of the evolution of tank technology between 1915 and 1945. We use principal component analysis to analyze the distribution of technological characteristics and how they map into specific service characteristics. We find that, despite the existence of differences in technical leadership, tank designs of different countries show a high degree of overlap and closeness along a common technological trajectory. In the conclusions, we speculate on whether this pattern can be explained by common heuristics that influenced the rate and direction of design activities or by doctrinal viewpoints influencing the development and use of tanks on the battlefield.

Keywords: Technological trajectories; Technological paradigms; Tanks. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2006-03.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: ‘Chariots of fire’: the evolution of tank technology, 1915–1945 (2009) Downloads
Working Paper: ‘Chariots of Fire’:The Evolution of Tank Technology, 1915-1945 (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2006/03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2006/03