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Birthplace of Silicon Valley in Shambles
CowTipperGore writes "Founded by William Shockley in the mid-50s, Shockley Semiconductor Lab is generally credited with starting the Silicon Valley boom. When he was unable to lure his former Bell Labs coworkers to join him, he filled his ranks with the best and brightest engineering school grads, including Gordon Moore and others who later went on to form Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.
The building at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California, is the original site of the company but, unlike the HP Garage, this building has received little protection or preservation. It recently housed a fruit stand, where visitors could find a small display about Shockley above baskets of fruit. The fruit stand is now closed, leaving the future of the building in the air."
Unlike the HP garage, which behind a reasonably cute house in a reasonably cute neighborhood (and HP has put up the money to buy and restore the house and garage), Shockley Semi was in a very unremarkable building. It's great to have a landmark sign there but do you really need to preserve the cheap building?
Just a few blocks away is another notable site:
http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=21522
NO. 1000 SITE OF INVENTION OF THE FIRST COMMERCIALLY PRACTICABLE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT - At this site in 1959, Dr. Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation invented the first integrated circuit that could be produced commercially. Based on 'planar' technology, an earlier Fairchild breakthrough, Noyce's invention consisted of a complete electronic circuit inside a small silicon chip. His innovation helped revolutionize 'Silicon Valley's' semicondutor electronics industry, and brought profound change to the lives of people everywhere.
Location: 844 E Charleston Rd, Palo Alto
It's also in a pretty unremarkable building.
Just a few blocks from the HP garage is another interesting site:
NO. 836 PIONEER ELECTRONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY - This is the original site of the laboratory and factory of Federal Telegraph Company, founded in 1909 by Cyril F. Elwell. Here, Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the three-element radio vacuum tube, devised the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in 1911-13. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age.
Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto
That building is already long gone. Unless there's something remarkable about the building or you have a sympathetic property owner, I say let progress march on.
I've never heard of any important Silicon Valley history centered around anything called the "Shockley Semiconductor Lab." The HP Garage is, in fact, the generally-acknowledged birthplace of Silicon Valley. There can be only one of those.
It's true that Shockley was a co-inventory of the transistor, but that happened on the East coast, at Bell Labs. (Shockley was also a racist fucktard of the first magnitude, a genuinely-unlikable sort who managed to alienate pretty much every professional colleague he ever had.)
If Shockley's lab in California gets replaced by a parking garage or whatever, I'm sure it's no great loss. HP is, and was, where it all got started.
I lived up the street from that joint for about 10 months. I loved that place; cheap fruit, and an extra bonus of shopping in the birthplace of silicon valley. Also: they sold odd foreign fruits that people from Wisconsin hadn't often seen before.
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
Come visit Philadelphia sometime. It's nice.
I used to work in this building about 8 years ago. There was an ergonomic furniture company, and I did their IT as a part time job during college break. Inside it is basically just a large warehouse, with concrete floors and a leaky roof.
The place was a posterchild of those California "This location contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer." From what I remember when they were developing the IC with all the various chemicals that entails they would just dump the extra chemicals in back(there is a parking lot there now).
When I was there the owners of the company had a half-hearted attempt to get the property designated as a landmark, as others have suggested. But I assume that it all fell through given the current circumstances.
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
Here, Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the three-element radio vacuum tube, devised the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in 1911-13. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age.
Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto
You mean the same Lee DeForest who couldn't explain how his amplifier worked? It's certainly historical as a monument to big money and the ability to obtain priority of a patent from the rightful inventor. I am referring of course, to Edwin H. Armstrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Armstrong
A building is just a building, unless it's the Pyramids, Stonehenge or a cathedral, it's not worth preserving just because some event took place there. It's the people who created that event that count.