FreakTakes

Home
Podcast
Engineering Innovation
Shorts
ARPA Playbook
Archive
About
An Alternative Approach to Deep Tech VC
Marrying early YC's goals with systems from the mid-20th C. deep tech pipeline
 • 
Eric Gilliam
5
How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?
Alternative Title: Why all applied research organizations should hire a Bell-style systems engineer
 • 
Eric Gilliam
3
A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology
This piece is noticeably longer (twice the length) than the others on this Substack. This is because 1) it is a practically-oriented historical…
 • 
Eric Gilliam
Most Popular
View all
When do ideas get easier to find?
 • Eric Gilliam
4
A Progress Studies History of Early MIT — Part 1: Training the engineers who built the country
 • Eric Gilliam
What should new-age research organizations be optimizing for?
 • Eric Gilliam
3
How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?
 • Eric Gilliam
3
A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology
 • Eric Gilliam
New
Top
Community
Irving Langmuir, the General Electric Research Laboratory, and when applications lead to theory
To this point, I’ve written tens of thousands of words on this Substack covering the work of scientists from the early-to-mid-1900s — a golden era of…
 • 
Eric Gilliam
A Progress Studies History of Early MIT — Part 1: Training the engineers who built the country
The MIT Series Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen opened their 2019 Atlantic piece that helped jump-start the progress studies movement with the following…
 • 
Eric Gilliam
When do ideas get easier to find?
And why progress studies may be much older than you think
 • 
Eric Gilliam
4
John von Neumann: A Strange Kind of Bird
What his career can teach us about the nature of scientific creativity.
 • 
Eric Gilliam
5
Bombs, Brains, and Science
Would you rather lose 10% of your researchers or 10% of your labs?
 • 
Eric Gilliam
The Autonomous Land Vehicle, Pilot's Associate, and Battle Management
Three North Star Applications Projects from DARPA's Strategic Computing Portfolio
 • 
Eric Gilliam
MOSIS
The 1980s DARPA 'Silicon Broker'
 • 
Eric Gilliam
1
FreakTakes
FreakTakes
Historical analyses for those building a new generation of research orgs
Recommendations
Macroscience
Macroscience
Tim Hwang
The Good Science Project
The Good Science Project
Stuart Buck
Construction Physics
Construction Physics
Brian Potter
The Roots of Progress
The Roots of Progress
Jason Crawford
What's New Under the Sun
What's New Under the Sun
Matt Clancy
© 2023 Eric Gilliam
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing