WASHINGTON — As the nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War in April, the Army looks back at the roots of its legacy of service.

Paul Revere and his midnight ride is one of the most recognized images from the events surrounding the battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. While most people think of him as a lone actor, he was part of a much larger network of early warning intelligence systems and communication nodes the Army later developed into the Signal Corps and military intelligence.

The crisis that led Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride didn’t begin overnight.

Resistance Groups

When Britain began to place more financial burdens on the colonists in the 1760s and remove fundamental rights, many colonists began to organize resistance groups like the Sons of Liberty.

By 1774, Massachusetts was the focal point for civil unrest, and the British government took extreme measures against the colony. The Crown curtailed most civil liberties, closed the port of Boston, and in October, dissolved the colonial legislature.

In response, the legislature continued to meet as the representatives of the people, calling itself the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Working through the Fall, the Provincial Congress established a Committee of Safety, reorganized the colony’s militia, encouraged more efficient leadership, and established higher standards of readiness for quick-reaction units, known as minute battalions. Soldiers in these units tended to be younger, more highly motivated, better trained, and were known as “minutemen.”

Most minute units were led by combat veterans of the French and Indian War (1754-1763). By early 1775, nearly 20,000 troops were organized in militia regiments and minute battalions across the colony.

Secret caches

To support the combat element of what was being referred to as the Massachusetts Provincial Army, the Congress established a Committee of Supplies to amass military stores and equipment in secret caches around the colony.

Communities hid small arms, ammunition, artillery pieces, tents, entrenching tools, medical chests, and other supplies in gardens, outbuildings, and basements. If the growing force of 4,000 British regulars in Boston were ever to begin a conflict in Massachusetts, the Provincial Army would need these supplies to rapidly mass and meet them in combat.

Since the citizen-soldiers of the militia could not stay on alert permanently, the provincials organized a robust intelligence and signal network to provide early warning if a threat appeared.

Intelligence agents inside Boston collected information on British plans and speedily sent word into the countryside so that the Provincial Army were almost as informed of the actions of the British military as the British were themselves.

The Committee of Safety established a network of alarm riders in the counties around Boston to be able to rapidly spread the word should the Sons of Liberty have actionable intelligence.

Paul Revere

An early member of the Sons of Liberty who had experience carrying urgent messages across the colonies was 40-year-old silversmith Paul Revere.

By April of 1775, he was one of those in Boston entrusted with the mission of passing through British lines to carry word into the countryside should the regulars ever march on a provincial target. If caught with incriminating information, Revere and the other alarm rides could suffer imprisonment or death.

On the evening of April 18, patriot leader Joseph Warren received intelligence that a force of about 700 redcoats was assembling to march west toward Concord the next day to seize military supplies and arrest members of the Provincial Congress.

Warren instructed Paul Revere and William Dawes to escape the city and activate the colony’s alarm network.

Unsure if the British force would march out via Boston neck or ferry their troops across the Charles River toward Cambridge, Revere coordinated signal lanterns in the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church: one if by the land route, two if by water.

This simple but effective code let Revere and other alarm riders know just before midnight that Royal Navy sailors were ferrying the regulars to Lechmere Point.

Revere slipped past the warships in Boston harbor to Charlestown, where he mounted his horse and raced westwards to spread the alarm.

Joined by William Dawes, who had spread the alert on the route from Boston Neck, Revere rode through the night toward Concord, spreading word that, “The regulars are coming out!” This triggered the colony’s alarm network.

Alert riders spread the word north, west, and south, with word reaching as far away as New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island by the end of the day on April 19.

The network activated some 14,000 militia and minutemen in 47 regiments all within marching distance of Concord.

Church bells and drums called the soldiers to muster, families cooked rations and rolled cartridges, and dozens of companies began their march.

Few thought it would be the first action in what would become an eight-year war for independence, nor that someday an organization called the U.S. Army would develop signal network systems based on relays to communicate across the battlefield. The groundwork established in colonial Massachusetts forms the basis for the modern-day Army Signal Corps and military intelligence branches.

By MAJ Jonathan Bratten, U.S. Army Center of Military History

You might be surprised by the number of things you use or rely on in work and play can be traced back to Army ingenuity or investment.

Check out this list to discover some of the many things created for or by the Army.

Food preservation – The Army is renowned for food preparation research. The U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts specializes in, among other things, sustaining the military’s food.

Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of “Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way We Eat,” says much of the processed food we eat today originated through experiments in an Army laboratory.

The Army’s Quartermaster Corps funded research at the USDA early in World War II to resolve a problem that had stymied Army food scientists – they couldn’t dehydrate cheese to feed soldiers.

USDA scientist George Sanders came up with the solution, and after the war his method of powdered cheese was used to flavor Cheetos.

The Army also expanded research into high-pressure processing, which de Salcedo says is the application of high pressure to eliminate bacteria in food. Once the food industry adopted the Army’s techniques, it began using them on foods that are produced for public consumption.

One popular product that relies on the pressure process is ready-to-eat guacamole.

In a 2015 interview with National Public Radio, de Salcedo said she realized “that everything in my kids’ lunchboxes had military origins or influence – the bread, the sandwich meat, juice pouches, cheesy crackers, Goldfish Crackers and energy bars,” she said. “In a large sense, l estimate that 50 percent of items in today’s markets were influenced by the military.”

Pringles – The USDA and the Army Quartermaster Corps worked to develop dehydrated potato flakes, which led directly to the production of Pringles potato crisps.

Super Glue – Cyanoacrylate adhesives were initially discovered during World War Il by a scientist at Eastman Kodak Company when the Army was urging American industry to make things to help win the war.

Dr. Harry Coover initially created the new compound in 1942, while striving to create a clear plastic gun sight for Soldiers.

Believing the substance was too sticky, Coover shelved the idea for a decade, but later revisited it while researching material to make jet canopies. This time he realized he had created a super glue, and he filed for a patent.

During the Vietnam War, medical teams caring for severely injured Soldiers realized the material, marketed as Super Glue, was helpful for sealing bloody wounds and to stop bleeding until the patient could be transported to a medical unit for more advanced treatment. Cooper said he took great pride in the fact that his glue saved the lives of many Soldiers injured in combat.

The computer – The Army funded research by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania into the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. This was the first electronic computer used for general purposes. The Army wanted to calculate artillery firing tables for its Ballistic Research Laboratory. Construction began in 1943. Six women, recruited in 1942 for their math skills, programmed ENIAC.

Electric Razors – A retired Army colonel invented the first electric razor that could be easily manufactured. Jacob Schick patented his invention in 1928.

Duct Tape – In 1943, an Illinois woman with two sons in the military during World War II first visualized how to make a waterproof cloth tape to seal boxes of ammunition.

Vesta Stoudt worked at the Green River Ordinance Plant near Amboy, Illinois. According to Margaret Gurowitz, the chief historian with Johnson & Johnson, workers at the plant saw that the paper tape used to seal boxes of rifle ammo was inferior and hampered how Soldiers in combat opened the boxes, often while under fire.

Stoudt told others how the tape could be improved but didn’t get help from her supervisors. So, she wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, explaining the problem and detailing her idea to solve it with a better tape. According to Johnson & Johnson company history, the president passed her letter on to the War Production Board.

The board approved of the change and asked a Johnson & Johnson operating company to make the product based on its experience in making tape.

The Jeep – The brainstorm for a quarter-ton, four-wheel drive truck designed as a cross-country tactical vehicle originated just before World War II for the infantry. The military considered numerous prototypes from America’s automakers, and during the war, Willys-Overland and Ford Motor Company produced 643,000 Jeeps for Allied forces.

Two-way portable radio – The Army asked Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, (now Motorola) to make a radio that would allow World War II Soldiers on the move to communicate with each other.

The EpiPen – The roots of a self-directed auto injector go back to 1973, when the Army asked a researcher to create an easy-to-use device to treat chemical warfare exposure for troops in the field. Soon after, experts in the medical industry realized that the auto injector device filled with epinephrine could be carried by civilians who suffer severe allergic reactions.

By Jonathan Austin , Army News Service