Comment by analog31

To some extent, the NSF did that. My graduate education was funded by the NSF, and my research didn't have an obvious practical purpose, except to enable further research.

Today, I'm in a corporate research role, and I'm still given a lot of freedom. I'm also genuinely interested in practical applications and I like developing things that people want to buy, but my ability to do those things owes a lot to the relatively freewheeling days of NSF funding 30+ years ago.