From IEEE Spectrum, June 20, 2022:
The rising number of components on a microchip is the go-to example of roaring innovation. Intel’s first microprocessor, the 4004, released in 1971, had 2,300 transistors; half a century later the highest count surpasses 50 billion, for the Apple M1 Max—an increase of seven orders of magnitude. Most other technical advances have lagged behind: During the entire 20th century, maximum travel speeds rose less than tenfold, from about 100 kilometers per hour for express trains to 900 km/h for cruising jetliners. Skyscrapers got only 2.4 times as tall, from the Singer Building (187 meters) to the Petronas Towers (452 meters).
But there is one accomplishment that, unfortunately, has seen even higher gains since 1945: the destructive power of explosives.
Modern explosives date to the 19th century, with trinitrotoluene ( TNT) and dynamite in the 1860s, followed by RDX (Royal Demolition Explosive), patented in 1898. During the Second World War, explosive power rained on European and Japanese cities in the form of mass-scale bombing, and by the war’s end, in 1945, the most powerful explosive weapon was the Nazi V-2 rocket. It carried 910 kilograms of amatol—a blend of TNT and ammonium nitrate—and had an explosive energy of about 3.5 gigajoules....
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