How the U.S. Became A Science Superpower

Prior to WWII most advanced technology research in the U.S. was done in corporate innovation labs (GE, AT&T, Dupont, RCA, Westinghouse, NCR, Monsanto, Kodak, IBM, et al.) Universities had no government funding (except for agriculture) for research. In 1945, Vannevar Bush published a report “Science, The Endless Frontier” advocating for government funding of basic research in universities, colleges, and research institutes. Innovation clusters formed around universities like MIT and Harvard which had received large amounts of OSR&D funding (MIT’s Radiation Lab or “Rad Lab” employed 3,500 civilians during WWII and developed and built 100 radar systems deployed in theater,) or around professors who ran one of the OSR&D divisions – like Fred Terman at Stanford.