Silicon Valley is an almost three
trillion dollar neighborhood
thanks to companies like Apple Google
and Tesla but it wasn't always this way
[Music]
in the late 1800s san francisco's port
helps make it a hub of the early
Telegraph and radio industries in 1909
San Jose became the home of one of the
country's first radio stations in 1933
the Navy purchased Moffett Field to dock
and maintain the USS Makin 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 David Packard
founded Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto
which originally made oscillators then
during World War two Hewlett Packard
made radar and artillery technology at
this point computers were about the size
of a room in the 1940s William Shockley
Co invented the transistor wall 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 on a
silicon and not germanium the company
was founded in Mountain View California
so Shockley could be closer to
Jacque Lee's company employed many
recent graduates from Stanford 1957
Shockley employees grew tired of his
demeanor and left the company
Shockley called this 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 traders eight left Fairchild
including Gordon Moore and Robert notes
who in 1968 founded their own company in
Santa Clara called Intel soon after
other X Fairchild employees and traders
eight members helped found AMD 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 up Park lab in Palo Alto
Park invented early computing tech
including Ethernet computing and the
graphical user interface in 1971
journalist Don Hossler titled a
three-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 integer eBay Yahoo PayPal and
Google are just some of the companies
founded in the area in the 1990s with
Facebook Twitter and Tesla joining them
the following decade the growth of the
tech industry in the area continues to
this day
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