Animated timeline shows how Silicon Valley became a $2.8 trillion neighborhood
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Published 2017-06-05
Silicon Valley is an almost $3 trillion neighborhood thanks to companies like Apple, Google, and Tesla. But it wasn't always this way.
In the late 1800s, San Francisco's port helped make it a hub of the early telegraph and radio industries. In 1909, San José became home to one of the US's first radio stations. In 1933, the Navy purchased Moffett Field to dock and maintain the USS Macon. This made Moffett Field a major hub for the early days of the aerospace industry. Many scientists and researchers all found work in the area. In 1939, the Ames Research Center was founded in the area, and it became home to the world's largest wind tunnel in 1949.
Also in 1939, William Hewlett and Dave Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, which originally made oscilloscopes. Then, during World War II, HP made radar and artillery technology. At this point, computers were about the size of a room.
In the 1940s, William Shockley coinvented the transistor while at Bell Labs. The transistor is now known as the computer processor. In 1956, Shockley left Bell and founded his own company — Shockley Semiconductor Labs. It was the first company to make transistors out of silicon and not germanium. The company was founded in Mountain View, California — so Shockley could be closer to his sick mother. Shockley's company employed many recent grads of Stanford.
In 1957, eight Shockley employees grew tired of his demeanor and left the company. Shockley called the group the "Traitorous Eight." They partnered with Sherman Fairchild to create Fairchild Semiconductor. In the early 1960s, Fairchild helped make computer components for the Apollo program. Later in the decade, many of the "Traitorous Eight" left Fairchild and founded their own companies. Including Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who in 1968 founded their own company in Santa Clara called Intel. Soon after, other ex-Fairchild employees and "Traitorous Eight" members helped found AMD, Nvidia, and venture fund Kleiner Perkins.
In 1969, the Stanford Research Institute became one of the four nodes of ARPANET. A government research project that would go on to become the internet. In 1970, Xerox opened its PARC lab in Palo Alto. PARC invented early computing tech, including ethernet computing and the graphical user interface. In 1971, journalist Don Hoefler titled a 3-part report on the semiconductor industry "SILICON VALLEY USA." The name stuck.
In the 1970s, companies like Atari, Apple, and Oracle were all founded in the area In the 1980s, Silicon Valley became the widely accepted center of the computer industry. eBay, Yahoo, PayPal, and Google are just some of the companies founded in the area in the 1990s With Facebook, Twitter, Uber, and Tesla joining them the following decade. The growth of the tech industry in the area continues to this day.
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All Comments (21)
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I'm not sure how IBM was left off of this list. For anyone who grew up in the early 80s, you know that San Jose was dominated by IBM, while orchards and open fields still dominated the San Jose landscape.
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You know you're in Silicon Valley when Teslas are as common as BMW's/Mercedes & the occasional Super Exotic Sports car drives by.
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When I was a kid I thought it was the place fake boobs were made.
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"It wasn't always this way" >Proceeds to explain how Silicon Valley has always been a hub for technology
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I love California is home to the world's smartest and dumbest people, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
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1:26 "The transistor is now known as the computer processor" This is incorrect. Transistors are a major component in computer CPUs.
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Where are Pied Piper and Hooli? 😂😂
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so basically, we will never get to own a house there
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should have not sold our family home in '97. sigh
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I remember when my house was 600k & now it’s $1.4 mil (in Santa Clara)
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My father was part of the first big wave of electrical engineers moving into Silicon Valley in the 1950's - working at Sylvania and Fairchild Semi. He explained that one of the reasons why Silicon Valley was able to succeed so much was because the people weren't stuck with the social strictures of life on the east coast - going to church on Sunday, having to go to Grandmas for supper, etc. They could do whatever they damn well pleased, and it allowed them to think outside the box.
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Growing up when this is all going down, it made it eventually impossible for a college student to live in the bay area just because there was an influx of engineers and high skilled workers taking up the mantle; therefore causing a huge spike in living costs in the area
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That's why some family work paycheck to paycheck because the cost of living is really expensive here in Silicon Valley especially here in San Jose CA.. (shoutout to the people who live here in San Jose)
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I drove through Silicon Valley visiting my girlfriend, i was amazed at all the company headquarters i saw
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"The transistor is now known as the computer processor" Wait what ?
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I wonder what internet speeds they have?
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There's so many job opportunities in Silicon Valley, especially for those who enjoy computer science.
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I lived in the South Bay from 1962 until 2015. In those early days, it was utopia with small towns separated by open fields and fruit/nut orchards that two-lane roads ran through to connect the towns. Suburbs started sprawling with new middle-class homes, but I could ride my bicycle into the undeveloped Santa Cruz Mountains often without seeing anyone driving a car for an hour or two. It was laid-back and hip! The Bay Area was the perfect place for Hippies to originate, in the sense that it still had a pastoral character with a sense of community. My town, Los Gatos, was a charming sleepy hollow of retirees, widows and Old Town style. Then, in the '70's, all hell broke loose! High tech business buildings suddenly sprang up like mushrooms everywhere! I went from hippie to Silicon Valley engineer within a few years! It was a wild ride, and I met a lot of interesting people along the way, including many entrepreneurs & a guy who'd worked directly with Hewlett & Packard when they were just five people! I watched SV develop from the inside. It was start-up after start-up! Now retired, I'm glad to be missing the most frantic & expensive times, living in the Sierra-Nevada on the cheap! But I got the experience of watching history unfold in Silicon Valley's best days, including those before they paved Paradise!
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this tickles my capitalism.
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I live near Silicon Valley and it's pretty cool knowing where I grew up has helped mold today's tech industry
