alternatehistory.com

I've been wondering about the impact of World War 2 on technological and scientific development, and how this might have been affected by the war not taking place. Obviously military applications or the possibility of military applications are a major driving force behind a lot of new technology, the spin-offs sometimes benefiting wider society.

Certainly one area that might seem to stand out is in the area of nuclear fission. Now this IIRC was already known about in the '30s, but with no push to develop the atomic bomb, there would be less impetus to develop methods for isotope-seperating uranium to obtain enough fissile material (as I recall being a major challenge recalled by Richard Feynman in "Los Alamos From Below".) Would no World War 2 have led to the development of no nuclear weapons, or would any resulting Cold War (possibly less likely if less Soviet influence on Europe folowing WW2) and would there have been less impetus to develop nuclear power, if not to provide material for nuclear weapons during the arms race?

I was wondering about computers, but apart from an inference that ENIAC was financed by the US Army, and some of the more famous developments such as the Enigma decoding machine, and so on, I can't find anything to suggest this, as various projects were being worked on before the war.

Can anybody answer these questions an think of any further examples, military or non-military? Rocketry, perhaps? Radar?
Top