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Birthplace of Silicon Valley in Shambles

Posted by samzenpus on from the preserving-the-past dept.

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."

7 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Since it is a "tech building" by session_start · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not preserve its memory in a virtual world. That way you could use the physical land for something more useful, and still have the digital landmark for everyone to tour... I'm sure someone could make it happen and even profit from it...

  2. Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... by jfengel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I often hang around with a historian, who loves to stand in the places where historical events occurred and soak up the atmosphere, in a sense peering into the past. It gives her a perspective of the place, and perhaps an insight into the minds of those who shaped history there.

    I like to think I'm immune to such things, but on some of those trips I find myself similarly taken in. I didn't really need to see the Magna Carta or the Rosetta Stone or the Codex Hammurabi; I can read the texts more clearly and get better views via photographs. But on the other hand it's the FREAKING MAGNA CARTA and it's right there in front of me.

    I'm afraid that fruit stand isn't going to mean much to me, but I can see it meaning a lot to somebody else.

  3. Smart but messed up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Problem being how do you acknowledge Shockley Semiconductor and all of the good that Bill Shockley did whilst minimizing all of the, well... "not good" that he did?

    Do some reading - he was a brilliant but utterly offensive man who had one idea in his head (Shockley diode) at Shockley Semi which he stubbornly kept to, basically forcing himself out of the business and his engineers to start their own companies.

    So his role in the creation of Silicon Valley was twofold - he planted the original seed, then forced his own people to leave and start their own (competing) companies in the same area, obsoleting him and his ideas.

  4. Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... by khallow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Keep in mind the dinky fruit stand was home to a business failure that did a lot more than the Pyramids did. I think it would be very educational if the building were restored to what it looked like when it was used by Schockley and his surly staff.

  5. He may have been a Nobel prize winner... by hemp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But when he died, Stanford didn't even have a memorial for him due to his insistence on correlation between white skin and intelligence and advocation of eugenics to weed out the undesirable darker skinned races of the world.

    http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/shockley/shoc kley3.html/

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    1. Re:He may have been a Nobel prize winner... by turing_m · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wikipedia has an article on him.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

      The PBS article is a hit piece. In the controversial area of race/IQ/dysgenics, you will notice that there are no quotes from Shockley. Instead there is negative value judgment after value judgment without any references or specifics.

      Even with the wikipedia references, I notice that there are very few quotes to be found amidst many value judgments about his "(ob)noxious racial views". Surely if they were indeed that horrible they could treat the reader to a direct quote or two?

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  6. Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... by rlp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thanks, I didn't know that. BTW, if you get to Cambridge University, the library has (on display) a draft copy of 'Principia Mathematica' with written annotations by Isaac Newton. Much more recent, but still worthy of a geek pilgrimage. (A copy of a manuscript of "Winnie the Pooh" is in the same room).

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