I don't see how that is a refutation of what I wrote. For every example that people can point to of how government funding creates innovation you can point to a private example too. Heavier than air flight was mostly private money, jet engines were mostly government. The transistor was mostly private (Bell Labs) the IC was mostly government. In terms of energy the two most important things in the last few decades are solar and fracking. Solar got a lot of government subsidies, fracking improvements were largely due to industry.
Edit: and there are entire industries, like petrochemicals, where most of the advances came from industry.
I think that's a pretty big stretch. I don't see a direct link between the award Alexander Graham Bell got in 1880 and the research output of Bell Labs in the 1940s. Bell Telephone existed as a corporation prior to the award from the French government. "Bell Labs" didn't exist as a separate entity with that name until the 1920s.
In 1880, the French government awarded Alexander Bell about $300k which he used to fund Volta Laboratory (Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory) in Washington, D.C. but AT&T took control of its patents (Bell System) by 1889.
I still don't see how that is a real link between the research that was done over 40 years later at Bell Labs in New York and New Jersey (where most of the important research took place). It is also true that Bell Telephone existed prior to the award.
Even things like semiconductors benefitted massively from government research and funding. They’ve certainly taken off from there, though.
I’m trying to think of what industries this might not be the case for. Research thin industries like entertainment and media? Has the development of things like OLED mostly been by private companies? I guess finance? Seemingly if it involves engineering the government at least made the seed investment.
Just because the government has at some point invested in something doesn't mean it had to for it to take off. Once something is already going strong, it's to be expected that everyone who might stand to benefit will want to hop on the bandwagon, especially once the utility is proven. For example the government was not particularly involved with aircraft development until WW1 when it proved to be of considerable military importance.
It's also worth noting that many developments are unintended spillover from other efforts. For example a lot of US government money went into producing high purity germanium, which would ultimately enable the development of the solid state transistor, but the government wasn't directly trying to produce solid state transistors, they instead were concerned with producing diodes for radars.
In either case, I would not describe it as seed investment.
Government funded research being basically throwing money into the ether and hoping some entire brand new world of chemistry or physics or communications or anything like that is the whole point of government investment. Research into one area providing gains in other unexpected areas is a direct goal of the kind of research the government funds.
You know, like, the internet. The government wanted to make sure that nuking one air force base couldn't prevent the retaliation strike, so let's make a big network that is scalable, re-routable on the fly, and simple to put together. Creating a brand new sector of the economy and dominating the new sector with the likes of google and microsoft and apple was the exact outcome optimistic government employees would wish for.
Edit: and there are entire industries, like petrochemicals, where most of the advances came from industry.