None of the bedrock game-changer research from that period - EM theory, thermodynamics, radioactivity, QM, relativity, the original discovery of DNA - was funded by corporations.

Commercial research was responsible for conceptual refinements of existing insights, and for innovations developed as industrial and consumer applications, but not for the original intellectual breakthroughs that made specific classes of inventions and devices thinkable.

Computing itself was state-sponsored - first with Turing+Church's theoretical work, then with various practical implementations whose develop was accelerated by WWII, then with state subsidies and grants for further military and industrial development.

Recently state funding has become less and less effective because of the financialisation of academia. Universities now have explicit financial goals and lean heavily on the grant funding game.

Previously the culture was far more tolerant of blue sky inquiry that might not have an immediate payoff - or any payoff at all.