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How the U.S. became a science superpower
Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years. It happ…
His top-down, centralized approachwith weapons development primarily in government research labs shaped British innovation during WW II – and led to its demise post-war. Churchill’s successor, Labor’s Clement Attlee, dissolved the British empire, nationalized banking, power and light, transport, and iron and steel, all which reduced competition and slowed technological progress. By the end of the war, OSR&D funding had taken technologies that had been just research papers or considered impossible to build at scale and made them commercially viable – computers, rockets, radar, Teflon, synthetic fibers, nuclear power, etc.
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