Researching Research

While listening to the Notre Dame vs Michigan football game, it occurred to me...how does an independent person do good quality academic research? How do you get funding and how can you get collaborators who will help you debate your concepts. I guess 75 to 100 years ago, individual's with a keen interest in an area could really (with some effort) do research and publish that research.

Surfing the massive volume that is NSF.gov, also confirms my thinking that it is pretty much impossible for a private, unaffiliated person to get funding for research. Meaning that it is pretty likely that the nature of research is driven by what institutions want to achieve (given in its their staff)...

I think that would make a great paper...the Evolution of Research from Individual to Institutional, I wonder if I would be able to get it published though?