Rather like the iPhone, it contained few things that were fundamentally new - most of the key features had been around for a while and considered elsewhere - but it was the first to put all of them together in one place in the right way, and, like the iPhone, this changed everything. Every other warship afloat was obsolete.

The Dreadnought also created a problem. The Royal Navy had been funded since 1889 on the 'Two Power' rule - that it would not only be the strongest in the world but that it would also be stronger than the next two largest navies combined. Hence, the day before the Dreadnought was launched it had 32 battleships where Germany had 11 - a huge lead. The day after, it effectively only had one. It had to start again. The naval supremacy question was reset.

This is rather what the iPhone did, to both the mobile business and the entire consumer technology industry. All the existing parameters and entrenched advantages went away and the whole market was reset to zero.

Again like the iPhone, the Dreadnought was followed by a period of frenzied iteration. Dreadnought-type battleships got much bigger, faster and more powerful, as every innovation was extrapolated to its conclusion. Hence you got oddities like HMS Nelson, the phablet of battleships (the curious layout was partly a function of naval treaties - regulation distorting product design).