Basic research is performed without thought of practical ends. [It] leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn. New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science... Today, it is truer than ever that basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress."