Since 1945 the U.S. Federal Government has nurtured the fragile computer and related telecommunications industries to leadership positions in the world. It did this in eight ways.

• By setting ambitious targets for big system solutions,

• By providing billions of dollars for research and development to find big system solutions,

• By creating a market for the computer products of the new industries,

• By providing funding for graduate level grants and fellowships in computer research and engineering,

• By providing computer networks making scarce computer time available to researchers in government, universities, and many industries.

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In addition, the government provided policies that enabled the emerging industries to grow.

• Patent protection,

• Intellectual property rights, and

• Competitive computer and telecommunications procurements

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By 1990, the government was contributing almost one billion dollars annually to each of the computer and telecommunications industries. (One billion dollars in 1990 has a purchasing power of about $2 billion in 2019).

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Multiple federal agencies supported research in computing including the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA), military departments, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), NASA, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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The leading agencies were the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) undertaking advanced research beyond the capabilities of private companies.

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NSF created five-supercomputer center in 1985 to provide much needed access to high- for researchers in many disciplines including oil, automotive and pharmaceutical industries.

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DARPA was active in developing networks for user communities in the 1960’s. With the development of packet switching technology, it built the ARPANET; and in the 1970s made it available to the computer science research and other scientific research communities.
 

In 1986, NSF launched NSFNET the backbone of a network that connected hundreds of colleges and universities for use by departments of all varieties including computer science and engineering.

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Research labs such as IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, AT&T’s Bell Labs, and the Xerox Palo Alto research center (PARC), with corporate and government funding and contracts, were important contributors to the emerging industries.

 

Government funding to universities such as MIT, Stanford, UC-Berkley, and Carnegie Mellon developed generations of graduate students providing a pool of talent for the expanding industries. Later these graduates became entrepreneurs using what they learned at university and on government contracts to form startup companies and broaden the base of companies helping to accelerate the development of the two industries.

The government’s experiences and lessons learned with ARPANET and NSFNET and those of its contractors, and with the involvement of many players from many sources developing standards and protocols enabled the Internet in the late 1980s.

The federal government’s leadership and investments in research infrastructure provided the foundation for the growth of computer science and telecommunications industries. Those companies working on DARPA, NSF, the Office of Naval Research, and other federal agency projects later developed products for markets based on what they and others learned from their association with the government. Examples include core memories, computer time-sharing, the mouse, packet switching, computer graphics, virtual reality, speech recognition software, artificial intelligence, and relational databases.

Today, the federal government continues to support the big system challenges that industry cannot tackle. Yet, few Americans recognize or credit the important role that the federal government has played, and continues today, helping to place the U.S. in the undisputed leadership role in the emerging digital society for the past 75 years.

Sources, The National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Funding a Revolution, Government Support for Computing Research, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1999.

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ARPANET, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

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Photo: "The US-NASA-Columbia"