IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 62

Transpired Events (%)

classified them differently as
non-mission research, missionThe Pill
oriented research, and development. These classifications
Matrix Isolation
appear to correspond to the
Hindsight categories of science,
The Video Tape Recorder
technology, and engineering
(see Table 3). Unlike Hindsight,
TRACES examined events that
Ferrites
stretched as far back as the
1850s. TRACES found that nonThe Electron Microscope
mission research events peaked
twenty to thirty years before the
75% of All Events Completed
innovation, and made up about
Conception to Innovation Period
Point of Innovation
70% of total tracings.
For example, in examining
magnetic ferrites (compounds
used in computer memory stor1840
1860
1880
1900
1920
1940
1960
age), TRACES begins with nonmission research in cr ystal
FIGURE 3. Research events over time from the original TRACES report. (This is Figure 3 in
the TRACES report [10, p. 11]).15
chemistry from 1895. It then
follows, in a series of complicated connections and with gaps of many years, devel100
Nonmission Research
opments in telecommunications, ceramic materials,
Mission-Oriented Research
and magnetic theory. These events originated from reDevelopment and Application
search labs around the world in both private industry
80
and public institutions. The events then peak in the
1930s with developments in hard, soft, microwave,
and square-loop ferrites. The advent of computer systems in the early 1950s led to the first commercial use
60
of magnetic ferrites and thus the end of the tracing.

Comparison with Hindsight

30
20
10
Years Prior to Innovation

FIGURE 4. Research events over time from the original TRACES

report. (Figure 5 in the TRACES report [10, p. 15].)

dollars), worked in close collaboration with NSF staff to
produce the report.
The TRACES report was not just to validate the theory that "technological innovation represents the capstone of a broad pyramid of knowledge in which each
research building block plays a necessary and important role" but also to explore the demographics of
contributions [10, p. ii]. Similarly to Hindsight, the
TR ACES authors examined research events, but

TRACES responded to the Hindsight report. Some of the
early letter responses in Science attacked Hindsight for
having too narrow of a timeframe for assessing the benefits and impacts of research.8 A longer timeframe was
assumed to be more likely to identify more RXD events
attributable to basic and applied science. As discussed
by Ruttan [12, p. 4]:
"[Hindsight's view] was challenged in studies commissioned by the National Science Foundation and
conducted by the Illinois Institute of Technology....
The TRACES and Battelle studies adopted a time

8
It is worth looking at Footnote 3 of the 1967 paper for the author's
defense of their own methodology. "We believe, in any case, that the
method is probably capable of being used in a sequence of historical
steps to pick up the earlier contributions in a sort of historical integration
process. Alternatively, one could take larger historical steps; for example,
one might compare a military radio in 1966 with one in 1916. A step of this
size, though possible, would be much more formidable, because almost
everything - components, modulation techniques, spectrum utilizations,
in this example - is different, and the history of an older item would be
more difficult to reconstruct".

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER 2019

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

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