The First World War had become one of endless attrition, dominated by artillery barrages and machine-gun fire. As historian and journalist Mark Urban explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the tank began as a practical experiment – an attempt to answer this specific battlefield problem. A British Mark I tank moves across the Western Front in France in November 1916, marking the first use of tanks in warfare. Introduced during the Battle of the Somme, the armoured vehicle was designed to break the deadlock of trench warfare. “They thought this would stop the tanks,” Urban explains.