On Feb 8, 2012, at 10:34 AM, Ismail Lagardien wrote:
> Does anyone have access to data and success stories of state-funded research and innovation, please.
I wrote this long ago. Check out Flamm's book for more:
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Payoff.html
Myths of origin
While we're fact-checking some of the mythology that's grown up around computers, it's worth recalling the message of an older Brookings book, Kenneth Flamm's historical overview, Creating the Computer. In the received version of this history, equally popular on Wall Street and in the Silicon Valley, the machines were developed by plucky entrepreneurs tapping our wondrously munificent and flexible capital markets. While there's no denying the role of upstarts and venture capitalists in the evolution of the computer, especially over the last couple of decades, it's hard to imagine the machines would exist in their present form without several decades of support from the U.S. government, especially the military.
It's hard to overstate the government's role in the first few decades of the computer era, and even before. Ancestors like radar and code-breaking machinery were developed under government contracts as early as the First World War, and the Second accelerated the effort. Even such modern-seeming gadgets as video terminals, the light pen, the drawing tablet, and the mouse evolved from Pentagon-sponsored research in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. And the Internet, today celebrated as proof of the superiority of American capitalism, owes its very existence to the Pentagon's interest in having a communications network that could survive a nuclear war. The military's influence on software was less pervasive - though no one would have even developed a programming language without a machine to run it on. But even here, Washington's generous hand is visible: database software has its roots in Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission projects, artificial intelligence in military contacts going back to the 1950s, and airline reservation systems in 1950s air-defense systems. More than half of IBM's R&D budget came from government contracts in the 1950s and 1960s, and IBM's corporate ancestor got its start providing punched-card technology for the 1890 Census.
Point these facts out to the libertarians who populate the Internet, and they often respond by saying it all would have happened anyway. But, as Flamm writes, "Key players in the military first tried to convince established businesses and investment bankers that a new and potentially profitable business opportunity was presenting itself. They did not succeed, and, consequently, the Defense Department committed itself to financing an enormously expensive development program...." Europe's weakness in computers is often attributed to its stodgy business culture and thin financial markets, but, as Flamm shows, European governments were too stingy in their subsidies in the 1950s to get an industry going. By the 1960s, the U.S. lead was unbeatable.