Barack Obama Quotes
It was basic research in the photoelectric field-in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today's GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.
Obama, Barack. "Remarks by the President at the National Academy of Sciences." The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 29 Apr. 2013.
This quotation illustrates a way in which science is frequently at odds with politics. Our politicians realize the importance of scientific research to our standard of living, economy, and quality of life. So they want to support research and development programs. However, budgeting and planning for these in terms of expected or desired results is virtually impossible. So scientific research, especially basic research is not susceptible to the usual planning and monitoring that is so common and effective in construction projects or other applications of science and technology. It is hard to predict when and which scientists will have the next critical idea. It is very difficult to hold scientists or administrators accountable for scientific research results because of this factor. See {624876}.
He was observing that from a public policy point of view, it is very difficult to target research funds on projects that will have practical innovations because so many come from basic research or research in an entirely different field of science.
The “gap” is different in different fields. Public health has a particularly large gap while laser app;ications have a much smaller one.
This is why the American Government has played such a major role in most of the great technologies in American History. Interchangable Parts (A federal contract with Eli Whitney), Canal Construction (New York State built the Erie Canal), the Railroad (federal government gave hugh tracts of land to build the rail lines to the West), the Telegraph (No one would use it until the government financed the experiment to prove it by creating a line between Baltimore and Washington), AC Electricity, there the city of Rochester NY hired Tessler and Westinghouse to Demonstrate Generating Electricity at Niagra Falls and transmitting it over 20 miles which Edison’s Direct Current could not do), immunization (the Army Medical Corps gave the first grants to universities to develop the science of vaccines and immunization, the computer (in WWII the U. S. financed the development of computers sent to England to implement Turing’s breaking of the German “unbreakable” code), atiomic energy (the Manhattan Project—the largest scientific endeavor the world has known), the Internet (Developed with long term research funds for DARPA the future technology research arm of the Defense Department. American investors and businesspeople took each of these and developed them but the initial steps, when no capitalist dared risk on such basic and futureistic efforts were taken by American Government which probably could never have developed these technologies but the private sector could not do it with government in the role Moritz herein describes.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
