Stanford University History - Silicon Valley History - Supernova History Concept
Varian Associates - Fred Terman - Hewlett-Packard

A Few Quotes From...
Silicon Valley History

by Gregory R. Gromov

"In the beginning was the WORD ..."

Silicon Valley is an area that "located on the San Francisco, California, peninsula, radiates outward from Stanford University. It is contained by the San Francisco Bay on the east, the Santa Cruz Mountains on the west, and the Coast Range to the southeast. At the turn of the century, when fruit orchards predominated, the area was known as the Valley of Heart's Delight "

as Carolyn E. Tajnai, manager of Stanford computer forum begins one of her Web-manuscript that is describing Silicon Valley history from some of WWW best personal viewpoint.



About 40 years ago, Stanford University had some financial problems. The authorities of university tried to solve the problems by leasing part of the university land to high-tech companies for 99 years.

Carolyn Tajna clarified this point of Stanford's history in more detail:

" In the 1950's, the idea of building an industrial park arose. The university had plenty of land over 8,000 acres....but money was needed to finance the University's rapid postwar growth. The original bequest of his farm by Leland Stanford prohibited the sale of this land, but there was nothing to prevent its being leased. It turned out that long-term leases were just as attractive to industry as out right ownership; thus, the Stanford Industrial Park was founded. The goal was to create a center of high technology close to a cooperative university. It was a stroke of genius , and Terman, calling it ``our secret weapon,'' quickly suggested that leases be limited to high technology companies that might be beneficial to Stanford. In 1951 Varian Associates signed a lease, and in 1953 the company moved into the first building in the park. Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Preformed Line Products, Admiral Corporation, Shockley Transistor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments, Lockheed, Hewlett-Packard, and others followed soon after."

- Fred Terman, The father of Silicon Valley by Carolyn Tajna, 1995




According to Varian Associates it was a simple decision:

Gradually, facilities were moved from leased quarters in San Carlos to a quiet corner of Stanford land, thus creating what is today the Company's headquarters site, and incidentally bringingi nto being the Stanford Industrial Park - the most successful complex of its kind in the world.

Source: Varian Associates: An Early History

 



The First building of Silicon Valley

First Varian Associates building, Stanford Industrial Park,
Palo Alto, California, 1953.
Source: "Russell and Sigurd Varian - The Inventor and The Pilot",
by Dorothy Varian. Palo Alto, 1983, p.258.

The picture is reproduced here with Varian Associates permission since 1995.

A few month ago (the article was written in 1995 - GRG), William Hewlett described in more details his own concept of Silicon Valley's birth and its creator.
Carolyn Tajna remembers very clearly this conversation with William Hewlett :

"...in June, 1995, I had lunch at the Stanford Park Hotel and while leaving, I noticed a man holding a cane and sitting on a bench as though waiting for someone. I walked on by and then stopped, turned around, and walked back. I said, "Are you Mr. Hewlett?", and he replied, "Yes". I thanked him for his kindness in verifying information for me when I was writing my paper on "Fred Terman, The Father of Silicon Valley."He said "But Fred Terman didn't start Silicon Valley; the beginning of Silicon Valley was a supernova." He asked if I knew what a supernova was and I said yes, that it was an explosion of a large star. Mr. Hewlett spoke so softly that it was difficult to catch every word, but he proceeded to explain that a supernova caused a rippling effect that set the stage for future events. He explained that Lee de Forest, who was an electronics pioneer in the Palo Alto area in the early part of the Century, and his work were the supernova".

According to Rogers and Larsen, in 1912 "de Forest and two fellow researchers for the Federal Telegraph Company, an early electronics firm, leaned over a table watching a housefly walk across a sheet of paper. They heard the fly's foot steps amplified 120 times, so that each step sounded like marching boots. This event was the first time that a vacuum tube had amplified a signal; it marked the birth of electronics and opened the door for the development of radio, television, radar, tape recorders, and computers."

Also Rogers and Larsen add  that,"Lee de Forest had a Stanford University connection; his work was partly financed by Stanford officials and faculty."

Links Between Stanford University and Industry Carolyn Tajnai, 1995

According to astrophysicist Joseph Shklovski (1981) the total level of energy produced by human civilization during the last 300 years of industrial revolutions, is still about one hundredth of a percent of the total energy flow that reaches the surface of the earth from the sun. Meanwhile in recent decades of info-tech revolution, the total level of energy that earth eradiates to space comes to a million times more than it would have done naturally as the planet heated to 300 K. From this point, for the last couple of decades, Earth outran planet-giants Jupiter and Saturn and became comparable to Sun. So, for a radio-telescope's observer from outer space, the earth's info-tech revolution looks like the birth of a new bright star on the cold Earth-planet.

Source: "National Information Resources", by Gregory R. Gromov Nauka, 1984, p.15

See also:
Founding Fathers  by David Jacobson, Stanford Magazine, July/August 1998
In the midst of the depresssion, two sons of Stanford started a company in a Palo Alto garage.
How Did Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard end up launching the high-tech revolution?

Silicon Valley and Route 128  by Paul Mackun
Two main areas of the  American hi-tech kitchen:
West Coast - Silicon Valley , East Coast - Route 128

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