Previous to WWII the uswas a distant second in science and engineering. By the point the warfare was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown previous the British, and led the world for 85 years.
It occurred as a result of two very totally different folks have been the science advisors to their nation’s leaders. Every had radically totally different views on how one can use their nation’s assets to construct superior weapon programs. Submit warfare, it meant Britain’s early lead was ephemeral whereas the U.S. constructed the inspiration for a science and expertise innovation ecosystem that led the world – till now.
The British – Army Weapons Labs
When Winston Churchill turned the British prime minister in 1940, he had at his aspect his science advisor, Professor Frederick Lindemann, his pal for 20 years. Lindemann headed up the physics division at Oxford and was the director of the Oxford Clarendon Laboratory. Already at warfare with Germany, Britain’s wartime priorities centered on protection and intelligence expertise initiatives, e.g. weapons that used electronics, radar, physics, and so on. – a radar-based air protection community known as Chain Residence, airborne radar on evening fighters, and plans for a nuclear weapons program – the MAUD Committee which began the British nuclear weapons program code-named Tube Alloys. And their codebreaking group at Bletchley Park was beginning to learn secret German messages – the Enigma – utilizing the earliest computer systems ever constructed.
As early because the mid Nineteen Thirties, the British, fearing Nazi Germany, developed prototypes of those weapons utilizing their current navy and authorities analysis labs. The Telecommunications Analysis Institution constructed early-warning Radar, crucial to Britain’s survival in the course of the Battle of Britain, and digital warfare to guard British bombers over Germany. The Admiralty Analysis Lab constructed Sonar and anti-submarine warfare programs. The Royal Plane Institution was growing jet fighters. The labs then contracted with British firms to fabricate the weapons in quantity. British authorities labs seen their universities as a supply of expertise, however that they had no function in weapons improvement.
Below Churchill, Professor Lindemann influenced which initiatives acquired funding and which have been sidelined. Lindemann’s WWI expertise as a researcher and take a look at pilot on the employees of the Royal Plane Manufacturing facility at Farnborough gave him confidence within the competence of British navy analysis and improvement labs. His top-down, centralized strategy with weapons improvement primarily in authorities analysis labs formed British innovation throughout WW II – and led to its demise post-war.
The People – College Weapons Labs
In contrast to Britain, the U.S. lacked a science advisor. It wasn’t till June 1940, that Vannevar Bush, ex-MIT dean of engineering, informed President Franklin Roosevelt that World Warfare II could be the primary warfare received or misplaced on the premise of superior expertise electronics, radar, physics issues, and so on.
In contrast to Lindemann, Bush had a 20-year-long contentious historical past with the U.S. Navy and a dim view of government-led R&D. Bush contended that the federal government analysis labs have been sluggish and second price. He satisfied the President that whereas the Military and Navy must be in control of making typical weapons – planes, ships, tanks, and so on. — scientists from academia might develop higher superior expertise weapons and ship them sooner than Military and Navy analysis labs. And he argued the one means the scientists could possibly be productive was in the event that they labored in a college setting in civilian-run weapons labs run by college professors. To the shock of the Military and Navy Service chiefs, Roosevelt agreed to let Bush construct precisely that group to coordinate and fund all superior weapons analysis.
(Whereas Bush had no prior relationship with the President, Roosevelt had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy throughout World Warfare I and like Bush had seen first-hand its dysfunction. Over the subsequent 4 years they labored properly collectively. In contrast to Churchill, Roosevelt had little curiosity in science and accepted Bush’s opinions on the path of U.S. expertise applications, giving Bush sweeping authority.)
In 1941, Bush upped the sport by convincing the President that along with analysis, improvement, acquisition and deployment of those weapons additionally must be finished by professors in universities. There they might be tasked to develop navy weapons programs and remedy navy issues to defeat Germany and Japan. (The weapons have been then manufactured in quantity by U.S. companies Western Electrical, GE, RCA, Dupont, Monsanto, Kodak, Zenith, Westinghouse, Remington Rand and Sylvania.) To do that Bush created the Workplace of Scientific Analysis and Improvement (OSR&D).
OSR&D headquarters divided the wartime work into 19 “divisions,” 5 “committees,” and a pair of “panels,” every fixing a singular a part of the navy warfare effort. There have been no formal necessities.
Workers at OSRD labored with their navy liaisons to know what an important navy issues have been after which every OSR&D division got here up with options. These efforts spanned an unlimited vary of duties – the event of superior electronics, radar, rockets, sonar, new weapons just like the proximity fuse, Napalm, the Bazooka and new medication equivalent to penicillin, cures for malaria, chemical warfare, and nuclear weapons.
Every division was run by a professor hand-picked by Bush. And so they have been positioned in universities – MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, Columbia and the College of Chicago all ran main weapons programs applications. Almost 10,000 scientists and engineers, professors and their grad college students acquired draft deferments to work in these college labs.
People – Limitless {Dollars}
What modified U.S. universities, and the world perpetually, was authorities cash. A number of it. Previous to WWII most superior expertise analysis within the U.S. was finished in company innovation labs (GE, AT&T, Dupont, RCA, Westinghouse, NCR, Monsanto, Kodak, IBM, et al.) Universities had no authorities funding (aside from agriculture) for analysis. Tutorial analysis had been funded by non-profits, largely the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations and {industry}. Now, for the primary time, U.S. universities have been getting extra money than that they had ever seen. Between 1941 and 1945, OSR&D gave $9 billion (in 2025 {dollars}) to the highest U.S. analysis universities. This made universities full companions in wartime analysis, not simply expertise swimming pools for presidency initiatives as was the case in Britain.
The British – Wartime Constraints
Wartime Britain had very totally different constraints. First, England was underneath day by day assault.
They have been being bombed by air and blockaded by submarines, so it was logical that they centered on a smaller set of high-priority initiatives to counter these threats. Second, the nation was teetering on chapter. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made. (Illustrated by their abandonment of their nuclear weapons applications after they realized how a lot it will value to show the analysis into industrial scale engineering.) This meant that many different areas of innovation—equivalent to early computing and nuclear analysis—have been underfunded in comparison with their American counterparts.
Submit Warfare – Britain
Churchill was voted out of workplace in 1945. With him went Professor Lindemann and the coordination of British science and engineering. Britain could be with out a science advisor till 1951-55 when Churchill returned for a second time period and introduced again Lindemann with him.
The tip of the warfare led to excessive downsizing of the British navy together with extreme cuts to all the federal government labs that had developed Radar, electronics, computing, and so on.
With post-war Britain financially exhausted, post-war austerity restricted its potential to spend money on large-scale innovation. There have been no post-war plans for presidency follow-on investments. The differing financial realities of the U.S. and Britain additionally performed a key function in shaping their innovation programs. The US had an unlimited industrial base, ample capital, and a big home market, which enabled large-scale funding in analysis and improvement. In Britain, a socialist authorities got here to energy. Churchill’s successor, Labor’s Clement Attlee, dissolved the British empire, nationalized banking, energy and light-weight, transport, and iron and metal, all which lowered competitors and slowed technological progress.
Whereas British analysis establishments like Cambridge and Oxford remained leaders in theoretical science, they struggled to scale and commercialize their breakthroughs. For example Alan Turing’s and Tommy Flower’s pioneering work on computing at Bletchley Park didn’t flip right into a thriving British computing {industry}—not like within the U.S., the place firms like ERA, Univac, NCR and IBM constructed on their wartime work.
With out the identical degree of presidency assist for dual-use applied sciences or commercialization, and with non-public capital absent for brand new companies, Britain’s post-war innovation ecosystem by no means took off.
Submit Warfare – The U.S.
In the meantime within the U.S. universities and corporations realized that the wartime authorities funding for analysis had been an incredible accelerator for science, engineering, and medication. Everybody, together with Congress, agreed that the U.S. authorities ought to proceed to play a big function in persevering with it. In 1945, Vannevar Bush printed a report “Science, The Countless Frontier” advocating for presidency funding of fundamental analysis in universities, schools, and analysis institutes. Congress argued on how one can finest manage federal assist of science.
By the tip of the warfare, OSR&D funding had taken applied sciences that had been simply analysis papers or thought-about unattainable to construct at scale and made them commercially viable – computer systems, rockets, radar, Teflon, artificial fibers, nuclear energy, and so on. Innovation clusters shaped round universities like MIT and Harvard which had acquired massive quantities of OSR&D funding (MIT’s Radiation Lab or “Rad Lab” employed 3,500 civilians throughout WWII and developed and constructed 100 radar programs deployed in theater,) or round professors who ran one of many OSR&D divisions – like Fred Terman at Stanford.
When the warfare ended, the Atomic Vitality Fee spun out of the Manhattan Challenge in 1946 and the navy companies took again superior weapons improvement. In 1950 Congress arrange the Nationwide Science Basis to fund all fundamental science within the U.S. (aside from Life Sciences, a job the brand new Nationwide Institutes of Well being would assume.) Eight years later DARPA and NASA would additionally kind as federal analysis businesses.
Satirically, Vannevar Bush’s affect would decline even sooner than Professor Lindemann’s. When President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and Secretary of Warfare Stimson retired in September 1945, all of the knives got here out from the navy management Bush had bypassed within the warfare. His arguments on how one can reorganize OSR&D made extra enemies in Congress. By 1948 Bush had retired from authorities service. He would by no means once more play a job within the U.S. authorities.
Divergent Legacies
Britain’s centered, centralized mannequin utilizing authorities analysis labs was created in a wrestle for short-term survival. They achieved good breakthroughs however lacked the dimensions, integration and capital wanted to dominate within the post-war world.
The U.S. constructed a decentralized, collaborative ecosystem, one which tightly built-in large authorities funding of universities for analysis and prototypes whereas non-public {industry} constructed the options in quantity.
A key part of this U.S. analysis ecosystem was the genius of the oblique value reimbursement system. Not solely did the U.S. fund researchers in universities by paying the price of their salaries, the U.S. gave universities cash for the researchers amenities and administration. This was the key sauce that allowed U.S. universities to construct world-class labs for cutting-edge analysis that have been the envy of the world. Scientists flocked to the U.S. inflicting different international locations to complain of a “mind drain.”
In the present day, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 different licenses to expertise startups and current firms. Collectively, they spin out over 1,100 science-based startups every year, which result in numerous merchandise and tens of hundreds of latest jobs. This college/authorities ecosystem turned the blueprint for contemporary innovation ecosystems for different international locations.
Abstract
By the tip of the warfare, the U.S. and British innovation programs had produced radically totally different outcomes. Each programs have been influenced by the expertise and personalities of their nations science advisor.
- Britain remained a frontrunner in theoretical science and protection expertise, however its socialist authorities financial insurance policies led to its failure to commercialize wartime improvements.
- The U.S. emerged as the worldwide chief in science and expertise, with improvements like electronics, microwaves, computing, and nuclear energy driving its post-war financial increase.
- The university-industry-government partnership turned the inspiration of Silicon Valley, the aerospace sector, and the biotechnology {industry}.
- In the present day, China’s management has spent the final three a long time investing closely to surpass the U.S. in science and expertise.
- In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. authorities assist for college analysis, the long term of U.S. dominance in science could also be over. Others will lead.
Filed underneath: Science and Industrial Coverage |
