2 ms·

Surely steam engines or other Industrial Revolution inventions should take credit for first directed research and development projects?

• WalterBright 2y ago
  Those inventions were incremental progress by individual inventors. Not a directed research and development project. If you know of one that existed prior to the Wright, I'd like to hear about it. The Apollo program is a stellar(!) example of a directed research and development project. They started with a goal, identified the problems, solved each problem in an organized manner, and put the solutions together and accomplished the goal.
  • mrguyorama 2y ago
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Government_initiatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Governmen... John Harrison invented very stable clocks that could be used on an unstable platform to solve the problem.
    • WalterBright 2y ago
      Harrison's work is very interesting. But it seems to have been a one-off.