[jeffreyrogers]

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.

[frozencell]

> The transistor was mostly private (Bell Labs)

Wasn't Bell Labs indirectly funded by the French Government?

[jeffreyrogers]

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.

[frozencell]

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.

[jeffreyrogers]

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.