US Gov't Responsible for iPod

In what must be the strangest claim from an elected official since the Al Gore claimed to be responsible for the development of the Internet - President Bush claimed this morning that the government was responsible for the development of the iPod. As reported by Engadget, Bush told a crowd gathered at Tuskegee University in Alabama that "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."

While I fully support government funded research, the claim has to make someone scratch their heads and wonder if all the scientists and engineers involved really felt that they were only working so that Apple could one day develop a very popular portable music player with the results of their efforts. That said, Bush's statement wasn't totally off-base. The money spent on research by both the public and private sectors does often lead to unexpected technological developments (hence my support for publicly funded research).