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Title: Gold Rush Legacy: American Minerals and the Knowledge Economy

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: Most historical accounts date the American knowledge economy from aroundthe turn of the twentieth century, with the rise of science-based technologies, researchuniversities, and corporate laboratories. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, forexample, write that something fundamental changed around the turn of the twentiethcentury, when technological shocks in scientific disciplines generated economicallyimportant findings that swept the knowledge industry. The founding of the AmericanAssociation of Universities marked the emergence of research universities as a selfconsciousgroup, with particularly rapid expansion in applied sciences and engineering.1In this paper, we argue that many features of this configuration began muchearlier in the minerals sector, including synergies between higher education and industry,federal support for scientific research and infrastructure, deployment and diffusion ofcodified forms of useful knowledge, and economic progress based on extension of theknowledge frontier. In many major universities, the mining school was an early center ofmarket-oriented science that helped to chart the path of institutional evolution for thedistinctive U.S. innovation system.

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Authors: Wright, Gavin; Clay, Karen

Conference Name: All-UC Conference

Publisher Location: Berkeley, CA

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

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