click to enlarge Images: R&D 100 Archive

The 1980s were witness to global political, economic, and technological change, and the IR/R&D 100 Awards kept pace with trends. Ronald Reagan took office as U.S. president at the start of the decade, ushering in a buildup of military power, the fall of communism, and a slowdown in research efforts to develop alternate sources of energy.

In 1988, the name of the awards changed from the IR 100 to the R&D 100 Awards.

click to enlarge Figure 1: IR/R&D 100 Award Winners (1980 to 1989) by product category. Source: R&D 100 Archive.

Economically, newly industrialized economies expanded production. The globalization was evident in the number of IR/R&D 100 Award winners from outside the United States. In the decade, more than 100 companies not located in the United States won IR/R&D 100 Awards, surpassing the total number of non U.S. wins in the first 18 years of the competition.

Unfortunately, several high profile technological disasters marked the decade. The Union Carbide chemical spill in Bhopal, India; the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown; and the ecological damage created by the grounding of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound demonstrated shortcomings in both R&D and technical operations. The explosion of NASA's Challenger space shuttle in 1986 initiated major changes in the space agency's practices.

Technology drivers
While compact disks, VCRs, video recorders, video game consoles, and cell phones became popular consumer products during the decade, the personal computer perhaps had the greatest impact on society and science.

click to enlarge Figure 2: IR/R&D 100 Award Winners (1980 to 1989) by organization type. Source: R&D 100 Archive.

The number of award winners in information technologies doubled from the previous decade, and a new technology category—software—was added. Beam instruments and electrical devices played a more prominent role. Analytical instruments continued to be the dominant type of technology represented.

The number of energy and environmental technology winners was flat. In the 1983 Awards report, the editors noted that for the first time since the early 1970s, there were no entries for solar collectors, solar cells, or windmills.

In the life sciences arena, several tests were introduced to diagnose patients with the human immunodeficiency virus. In the latter part the decade, DNA technologies emerged, including a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system for DNA amplification from Perkin-Elmer Cetus in 1988.

Government research on the rise
Government-sponsored research was more prominent in the 1980s; five of the top 10 award winning organizations were financed by federal funds. NASA led the way with 43 awards, to move into second place in all-time wins.