Ok, I can see this lot shifting towards a survey of Who did What, Where, before we can comment on Why and – how it was funded. Will keep adding, even if not directly useful to Funding articles.
JackyR 21:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Ancient
Egyptian/Middle Eastern surveying and accounting needs.
Calendar calculation for religious or farming reasons
Peter Abelard's Sic et Non. Reintroduction of dialectic as means of philosophical research, possibly to aid religious dispute against
Cathars. (France)
European eagerness for Arabic texts for mathematics and accounting. Continuing primacy of accounting, surveying and navigation as motivations for science from 1100s onwards. Eg, check first printed books - mathematical texts some vast proportion of these.
Roger Bacon and co. Monasteries supporting research programs for religious reasons, eg Franciscan obsession with light/colour. (UK)
Cathedral building programmes and engineering/mathematics. Also masons' knowledge, trade secrets, etc.
18th century and 19th century (Dissenter?) research - knowing god's world as a means of knowing god. (->early quantitive data on meteorology, annual behaviour patterns of flora and fauna, description of species, collections) (UK, )
large numbers of gentlefolk/clerical scholars pursuing the above at a low level, as a "suitable activity" for a gentleman or lady -> massive accumulation of data/specimens (UK)
German organic chemistry and the dye industry (UK, Germany, colonial India)
Telegraphy - some funding from private companies for profit. Check whether also institutional funding. (UK, )
"Railway time" : casue of standardisation of time. Railway laid telegraph lines to Manchester to bring time from Greenwich Observatory. Also conductor's watch, bringing London time every morning. (UK)
Public health - democracy of some diseases (
cholera and
typhoid?) and move to funding general hygiene measures. 1830s(?) London: Check out inscription re Berwick St pump.
Weather predictions (esp wind speeds) for aircraft. Contrast w poorer data for oceanographic currents till interest in global warming.
Rise of scientific meteorology during WWII; massive recruitment and training in subject previously limited to the academy. After the war, war meteorologists soon replaced apprentice-based meteorology across US.
"grass-roots" fund-raising (The Curies collecting money to buy Radium ores, working the cure for cancer angle)
World War II
Governments become major investors in science for purposes of war technology
Rise of technical reports instead of traditional journal publications, for large-scale classified research
Post-Cold War
Japanese government identifies areas of likely technological demand/profitability and offers tax breaks to private companies for working in these areas. (Eg in 1990s it was encouraging research into improving digital storage media in this way).
Medical research - how does funding in each country reflect commercial interests and historical ethos in that country. Eg, Germany spends money on researching herbal medicine, China recently invented mechanical device to improve cardiac blood supply, UK tends to "a pill for everything" (and has lots of pharmaceutical companies). Check out funding for malaria research versus funding for weight-loss or cardiac probs.
Currently, in the UK, science research is usually funded by one or other of the following: RCUK (Research councils UK i.e. BBSRC, EPSRC, NERC, MRC), directly from government departments i.e DTI, DEFRA and MOD, from university coffers, industry (either inhouse or externally), or charities (inhouse i.e Cancer Research UK or externally). (Not sure if this is useful information as it is more current information, but if you take the various research councils, you can make small histories for each of them, plus for Cancer Research UK, so they do go back a bit. Maybe a current funding of science page would be more suitable for this info, if there is one).
Terri G 17:33, 3 July 2006 (UTC)