Science and Technology
Main article: Science and technology in the United States See also: Technological and industrial history of the United StatesThe United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. Nikola Tesla pioneered alternating current, the AC motor, and radio. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.
The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. IBM, Apple Computer, and Microsoft refined and popularized the personal computer.
The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, 64% of research and development funding comes from the private sector. The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor. As of April 2010, 77% of American households owned at least one computer, and 68% had broadband Internet service. 85% of Americans also own a mobile phone as of 2011. The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food, representing half of the world's biotech crops.
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Famous quotes containing the words science and, science and/or technology:
“If you have science and art,
You also have religion;
But if you dont have them,
You better have religion.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)
“If you have science and art,
You also have religion;
But if you dont have them,
You better have religion.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)