Missing the Cold War?

Was massive military research spending in the 1950s and '60s the key to New England's hightechnology development? Or did the Pentagon's constant siphoning of scientific talent and other resources cost the region leadership in civilian electronics and information technologies?

That question is at the heart of an upcoming series of seminars to be cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's not-yetopened Economic History Museum along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program and the University of New Hampshire Manufacturing Project.

The "informal" seminars, scheduled roughly monthly from September 1999 through June 2000, will feature scholars and industry experts drawn from the region's military-universityindustry complex.

Over a year ago, the Boston Fed announced plans to open a New England-oriented museum of economic history` aimed at an audience ranging, according to a Fed announcement, from "sophisticates to semi-rambunctious kids." The 10,000 square-foot facility, featuring artifacts and interactive exhibits, is tentatively set to open in April 2002.

For New Englanders who learned to love the bomb, meanwhile, there is some good news. Despite the end of the Cold War, federal funding of basic defense research rose by 7 percent in fiscal 1999 after several years of decline.

Copyright New England Board of Higher Education Summer 1999
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