
A History of Silicon Valley - rl3
https://www.scaruffi.com/svhistory/silicon.html
======
rst
See also "The Secret History of Silicon Valley", by former tech executive
Steve Blank: [https://steveblank.com/secret-
history/](https://steveblank.com/secret-history/)

Post-world war II defense contractors, mentored and brokered personally by
Stanford prof Fred Terman, have a lot to do with setting the stage, and get
surprisingly little attention for having done it...

~~~
creato
> and get surprisingly little attention for having done it...

One big chunk of people don't like to hear that the military had such a big
influence in the tech industry, and another big chunk of people don't want to
admit that government funding contributed to something wildly successful.

------
adventured
My favorite early history of Silicon Valley is still the 2013 PBS show
("American Experience: Silicon Valley" \- 82 minutes long). I found it to be
quite well done:

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/)

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/)

~~~
4AoZqrH2fsk5UB
This was my first thought. I’m surprised how many people don’t know the basic
outline.

------
11thEarlOfMar
One interesting anecdote: The Varian brothers, Russell and Sigurd [1], were
"Born to theosophist parents who helped lead the utopian community of Halcyon,
California". [0] Halcyon was an 'intentional community'.

They founded Varian Associates, an early influential firm, and a prototype for
the Silicon Valley M.O. for creating technology companies: They were incubated
at Stanford University.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon,_California)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_and_Sigurd_Varian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_and_Sigurd_Varian)

------
nikofeyn
there is also adam curtis’ documentary _all watched over by machines of living
grace_.

[https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353](https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353)

[https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352](https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352)

[https://vimeo.com/channels/ciri/80799354](https://vimeo.com/channels/ciri/80799354)

it isn’t an eplicit history of silicon valley, but it does cover related ideas
and movements.

------
rrss
> (1948: Claude Shannon founds Information Theory and coins the term "bit")

Shannon used the term in his 1948 paper, but IIRC it was Tukey that coined the
term and suggested it to Shannon.

------
nosianu
"The Secret History of Silicon Valley":
[https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo)

TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and
electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for
lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the later
capitalistic growth phase.

> _Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology
> innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by
> fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn 't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned
> inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and
> wartime urgency._

~~~
gumby
> TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and
> electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for
> lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the
> later capitalistic growth phase.

I agree with this with the caveat that the big beneficiary of this largesse in
the wartime and postwar region was inside Route 128 in Boston; Silicon Valley
really started taking off in the mid-late 70s. This is actually reflected in
the timeline (though its parentheicization is buggy).

The then primacy of the greater Boston area is not a complete accident: Both
FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, and the head of the wartime NDRC were
born and educated in Boston (both MIT grads; Conent was president of Harvard).
As the article points out, the major SV academic institutions Stanford and UCB
were still considered second tier at that time (despite UCB's atomic work and
Stanford's having already produced a US president).

~~~
nosianu
It is all mentioned and explained in the video I linked though. Those Boston
developments were not in isolation, what happened there impacted what happened
in SV.

------
ughitsaaron
This profile by Tom Wolfe of Robert Noyce, the co-founder id Intel and so-
called “Mayor of Silicon Valley”, also offers up some interesting history for
those interested.

[https://classic.esquire.com/article/1983/12/1/the-
tinkerings...](https://classic.esquire.com/article/1983/12/1/the-tinkerings-
of-robert-noyce)

------
jeromebaek
Scaruffi is an interesting guy. I've been following him since 2014. One of the
most prolific polymaths of our time. This is a good book:
[https://www.scaruffi.com/nature/purchase.html](https://www.scaruffi.com/nature/purchase.html)

~~~
ot
Also see
[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/arts/15morr.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/arts/15morr.html)

------
mattdougherty0
Thanks for the post, I enjoy the format although why the decision to not
include direct sources for each event on the timeline?

------
fluxic
Funny to see the world's biggest underground music critic meme star on the
front page of HN!

