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 completely different folks have been the science advisors to their nation’s leaders. Every had radically completely different views on the way to use their nation’s assets to construct superior weapon techniques. Submit conflict, it meant Britain’s early lead was ephemeral whereas the U.S. constructed the inspiration for a science and know-how 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 targeted on protection and intelligence know-how tasks, e.g. weapons that used electronics, radar, physics, and many others. – a radar-based air protection community referred to as Chain Dwelling, 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 Thirties, the British, fearing Nazi Germany, developed prototypes of those weapons utilizing their present navy and authorities analysis labs. The Telecommunications Analysis Institution constructed early-warning Radar, important 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 techniques. The Royal Plane Institution was creating 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 they’d no function in weapons improvement.
Underneath Churchill, Professor Lindemann influenced which tasks acquired funding and which have been sidelined. Lindemann’s WWI expertise as a researcher and take a look at pilot on the workers of the Royal Plane Manufacturing unit at Farnborough gave him confidence within the competence of British navy analysis and improvement labs. His top-down, centralized method with weapons improvement primarily in authorities analysis labs formed British innovation throughout WW II – and led to its demise post-war.
The Individuals – College Weapons Labs
Not like Britain, the U.S. lacked a science advisor. It wasn’t till June 1940, that Vannevar Bush, ex-MIT dean of engineering, advised President Franklin Roosevelt that World Warfare II could be the primary conflict received or misplaced on the premise of superior know-how electronics, radar, physics issues, and many others.
Not like 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 must be accountable for making standard weapons – planes, ships, tanks, and many others. — scientists from academia might develop higher superior know-how 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 Warfare I and like Bush had seen first-hand its dysfunction. Over the following 4 years they labored properly collectively. Not like Churchill, Roosevelt had little curiosity in science and accepted Bush’s opinions on the course of U.S. know-how packages, 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 carried out by professors in universities. There they might be tasked to develop navy weapons techniques and clear up 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 conflict effort. There have been no formal necessities.
Workers at OSRD labored with their navy liaisons to grasp 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 medicine resembling 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 techniques 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 eternally, was authorities cash. Numerous it. Previous to WWII most superior know-how analysis within the U.S. was carried out 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. Educational analysis had been funded by non-profits, principally the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations and {industry}. Now, for the primary time, U.S. universities have been getting extra money 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 tasks as was the case in Britain.
The British – Wartime Constraints
Wartime Britain had very completely different constraints. First, England was beneath each day assault.
They have been being bombed by air and blockaded by submarines, so it was logical that they targeted on a smaller set of high-priority tasks 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 after they realized how a lot it could value to show the analysis into industrial scale engineering.) This meant that many different areas of innovation—resembling 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 conflict 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 many others.
With post-war Britain financially exhausted, post-war austerity restricted its capacity 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 techniques. America had an unlimited industrial base, considerable 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 lightweight, transport, and iron and metal, all which diminished 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}—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 spanking 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 firms realized that the wartime authorities funding for analysis had been an incredible accelerator for science, engineering, and drugs. 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, faculties, and analysis institutes. Congress argued on the way to greatest manage 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 of inconceivable to construct at scale and made them commercially viable – computer systems, rockets, radar, Teflon, artificial fibers, nuclear energy, and many others. Innovation clusters fashioned round universities like MIT and Harvard which had acquired giant quantities of OSR&D funding (MIT’s Radiation Lab or “Rad Lab” employed 3,500 civilians throughout WWII and developed and constructed 100 radar techniques 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 Undertaking 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 task the brand new Nationwide Institutes of Well being would assume.) Eight years later DARPA and NASA would additionally type as federal analysis businesses.
Satirically, Vannevar Bush’s affect would decline even quicker 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 conflict. His arguments on the way to 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 targeted, centralized mannequin utilizing authorities analysis labs was created in a wrestle for short-term survival. They achieved sensible 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 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 services 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.”
Immediately, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 different licenses to know-how startups and present firms. Collectively, they spin out over 1,100 science-based startups annually, which result in numerous merchandise and tens of 1000’s of latest 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 techniques had produced radically completely different outcomes. Each techniques have been influenced by the expertise and personalities of their nations science advisor.
- Britain remained a pacesetter in theoretical science and protection know-how, 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 know-how, 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}.
- Immediately, China’s management has spent the final three many years investing closely to surpass the U.S. in science and know-how.
- 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 beneath: Science and Industrial Coverage |
