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."

Comments

Since it is a "tech building"

[session_start]

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...

Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring...

[jfengel]

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.

He may have been a Nobel prize winner...

[hemp]

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/

Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring...

[rlp]

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).