The Geography of U.S. Innovation (IMAGE)
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Circles indicate the number of patent applications filed by inventors in U.S. cities between 1920 and 1945. Cities still dominated by traditional, craftsmanship-based innovation are shown in red, while cities that had largely transitioned to the new science-based approach are shown in green. The map reveals that science-based innovation was concentrated primarily in the Northeast and in what is now known as the American Rust Belt. In its heyday, however, this region served as the Silicon Valley of the early twentieth century. Innovation centered on industrial research laboratories and was driven by teams of highly skilled engineers. Interestingly, the universities leading these efforts were not the elite institutions at the top of the academic hierarchy, but public universities rooted in the industrial heartland — including Purdue, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota — which pioneered close collaborations with industry and helped launch the era of university patenting in the United States.
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