Previous to WWII the united stateswas a distant second in science and engineering. By the point the conflict 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 individuals have been the science advisors to their nation’s leaders. Every had radically totally different views on use their nation’s sources to construct superior weapon methods. Publish conflict, 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 – Navy Weapons Labs
When Winston Churchill grew to become the British prime minister in 1940, he had at his facet his science advisor, Professor Frederick Lindemann, his buddy for 20 years. Lindemann headed up the physics division at Oxford and was the director of the Oxford Clarendon Laboratory. Already at conflict 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 referred to 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 present army and authorities analysis labs. The Telecommunications Analysis Institution constructed early-warning Radar, important to Britain’s survival through the Battle of Britain, and digital warfare to guard British bombers over Germany. The Admiralty Analysis Lab constructed Sonar and anti-submarine warfare methods. The Royal Plane Institution was creating jet fighters. The labs then contracted with British firms to fabricate the weapons in quantity. British authorities labs considered their universities as a supply of expertise, however they’d no function in weapons growth.
Beneath Churchill, Professor Lindemann influenced which initiatives acquired funding and which have been sidelined. Lindemann’s WWI expertise as a researcher and check pilot on the employees of the Royal Plane Manufacturing unit at Farnborough gave him confidence within the competence of British army analysis and growth labs. His top-down, centralized strategy with weapons growth primarily in authorities analysis labs formed British innovation throughout WW II – and led to its demise post-war.
The Individuals – 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, instructed President Franklin Roosevelt that World Battle II can be the primary conflict 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 gradual and second charge. He satisfied the President that whereas the Military and Navy should be accountable for making standard weapons – planes, ships, tanks, and so on. — scientists from academia might develop higher superior expertise weapons and ship them quicker 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 Battle I and like Bush had seen first-hand its dysfunction. Over the following 4 years they labored effectively collectively. In contrast to Churchill, Roosevelt had little curiosity in science and accepted Bush’s opinions on the course of U.S. expertise packages, giving Bush sweeping authority.)
In 1941, Bush upped the sport by convincing the President that along with analysis, growth, acquisition and deployment of those weapons additionally should be performed by professors in universities. There they might be tasked to develop army weapons methods and clear up army issues to defeat Germany and Japan. (The weapons have been then manufactured in quantity by U.S. firms Western Electrical, GE, RCA, Dupont, Monsanto, Kodak, Zenith, Westinghouse, Remington Rand and Sylvania.) To do that Bush created the Workplace of Scientific Analysis and Growth (OSR&D).
OSR&D headquarters divided the wartime work into 19 “divisions,” 5 “committees,” and a couple of “panels,” every fixing a singular a part of the army conflict effort. There have been no formal necessities.
Workers at OSRD labored with their army liaisons to grasp what crucial army issues have been after which every OSR&D division got here up with options. These efforts spanned an infinite vary of duties – the event of superior electronics, radar, rockets, sonar, new weapons just like the proximity fuse, Napalm, the Bazooka and new medication comparable to penicillin, cures for malaria, chemical warfare, and nuclear weapons.
Every division was run by a professor hand-picked by Bush. They usually have been positioned in universities – MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, Columbia and the College of Chicago all ran main weapons methods packages. Almost 10,000 scientists and engineers, professors and their grad college students acquired draft deferments to work in these college labs.
Individuals – Limitless {Dollars}
What modified U.S. universities, and the world endlessly, was authorities cash. Plenty of it. Previous to WWII most superior expertise analysis within the U.S. was performed 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 more cash than they’d 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 packages once they realized how a lot it will value to show the analysis into industrial scale engineering.) This meant that many different areas of innovation—comparable to early computing and nuclear analysis—have been underfunded in comparison with their American counterparts.
Publish Battle – Britain
Churchill was voted out of workplace in 1945. With him went Professor Lindemann and the coordination of British science and engineering. Britain can be with no science advisor till 1951-55 when Churchill returned for a second time period and introduced again Lindemann with him.
The tip of the conflict led to excessive downsizing of the British army 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 skill to put money into 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 methods. The US had an infinite industrial base, plentiful capital, and a big home market, which enabled large-scale funding in analysis and growth. In Britain, a socialist authorities got here to energy. Churchill’s successor, Labor’s Clement Attlee, dissolved the British empire, nationalized banking, energy and lightweight, 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. As an 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}—in contrast to within the U.S., the place firms like ERA, Univac, NCR and IBM constructed on their wartime work.
With out the identical stage of presidency help 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.
Publish Battle – 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 revealed a report “Science, The Infinite Frontier” advocating for presidency funding of primary analysis in universities, faculties, and analysis institutes. Congress argued on finest set up federal help of science.
By the top of the conflict, OSR&D funding had taken applied sciences that had been simply analysis papers or thought-about not possible 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 methods deployed in theater,) or round professors who ran one of many OSR&D divisions – like Fred Terman at Stanford.
When the conflict ended, the Atomic Power Fee spun out of the Manhattan Challenge in 1946 and the army companies took again superior weapons growth. In 1950 Congress arrange the Nationwide Science Basis to fund all primary science within the U.S. (aside from Life Sciences, a task the brand new Nationwide Institutes of Well being would assume.) Eight years later DARPA and NASA would additionally type as federal analysis companies.
Paradoxically, Vannevar Bush’s affect would decline even quicker than Professor Lindemann’s. When President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and Secretary of Battle Stimson retired in September 1945, all of the knives got here out from the army management Bush had bypassed within the conflict. His arguments on 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 task within the U.S. authorities.
Divergent Legacies
Britain’s centered, centralized mannequin utilizing authorities analysis labs was created in a battle for short-term survival. They achieved good breakthroughs however lacked the size, 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 element 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.”
Right this moment, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 different licenses to expertise startups and present firms. Collectively, they spin out over 1,100 science-based startups every year, which result in numerous merchandise and tens of hundreds of recent jobs. This college/authorities ecosystem grew to become the blueprint for contemporary innovation ecosystems for different international locations.
Abstract
By the top of the conflict, the U.S. and British innovation methods had produced radically totally different outcomes. Each methods 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 growth.
- The university-industry-government partnership grew to become the inspiration of Silicon Valley, the aerospace sector, and the biotechnology {industry}.
- Right this moment, China’s management has spent the final three many years investing closely to surpass the U.S. in science and expertise.
- In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. authorities help 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 |
