Slashdot Mirror
Silicon Valley Before the Startup
kenekaplan writes "An upcoming PBS documentary reveals how technology pioneers transformed Silicon Valley into the epicenter of technology innovation. From the article: 'Gordon Moore remembers a time before the idea of a Silicon Valley startup existed. That was half a century ago, before the place became an epicenter for wildly successful technology, and companies such as Apple, Google and Intel generated billions of dollars in annual profits. “It just exploded,” said Moore in the PBS documentary, “American Experience: Silicon Valley,” premiering Feb. 5. “Every time we came up with a new idea we spawned two or three companies that would try to exploit it,” he said, referring to his days at Fairchild Semiconductor, a company he helped found in 1957, a decade before he co-founded Intel with Robert Noyce.'"
Back in them days, the siliconers would work 28-hour days, with nothing but a slide rule. And we kids would leave school and go to work at age 2, hand-punching punchcards until our fingers bled. And even the best Porsches were all slow and hand-cranked.
But we was happier for it, I think.
I'm sick of hearing about pioneers who were really just exploitative suits in the right place at the right time. Like, say, the late Steve Jobs. Total prick, nobody in the industry likes him, but damn if he didn't know business. That does not make him a tech pioneer. It makes him a turtleneck sporting suit.
Still waiting for the follow-up article where we talk about how those same "pioneers" raped everyone with patent trolling, monopolistic business strategies, and all the other fun "FOR TEH BENNIES!" financial destruction that my country has come to epitomize. We worship CEOs, not engineers.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Interesting, I had to refresh a couple times before the article came up, and I had to repeat this across different browsers as well.
Here's the text in case anyone else has trouble viewing it.
PBS documentary reveals how technology pioneers transformed Silicon Valley into the epicenter of technology innovation.
Gordon Moore remembers a time before the idea of a Silicon Valley startup existed. That was half a century ago, before the place became an epicenter for wildly successful technology, and companies such as Apple, Google and Intel generated billions of dollars in annual profits.
"It just exploded," said Moore in the PBS documentary, "American Experience: Silicon Valley," premiering Feb. 5. "Every time we came up with a new idea we spawned two or three companies that would try to exploit it," he said, referring to his days at Fairchild Semiconductor, a company he helped found in 1957, a decade before he co-founded Intel with Robert Noyce.
The documentary, directed by Randall MacLowry and narrated by Michael Murphy, shows how the space race spurred demand for transistors and transformed what became Silicon Valley into a global hub of technology innovation; in the third quarter of 2012 nearly 40 percent of all U.S. venture investment was in Silicon Valley, according to Fenwick and West.
The microprocessor invented at Intel in 1971 is just one of many transistor technology-related breakthroughs explored in the documentary. "It's been successful beyond anything we could've possibly imagined in the beginning, and the result is it really revolutionized the way people live," said Moore.
Silicon Valley's Original Startup
Nearly 2 decades before the microprocessor was invented, Moore was among a group of young, highly educated innovators who came to the farmland of Santa Clara County to tinker with science, hoping to create the next technology. In Moore's case, that career path led to him helping take the transistor mainstream at a laboratory in Mountain View, Calif. under William Shockley, who was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for co-inventing the transistor.
"We discovered a group of young Ph.Ds. couldn't push aside a Nobel Prize winner so easily," said Moore, describing what led to the Sept. 18, 1957 defection of the so-called "traitorous eight" from Shockley Labs. After failing to convince company owners that Shockley should be removed as manager because of increasing mistrust among employees, Moore and seven young scientists left the company to found Fairchild Semiconductor. The documentary singles out Fairchild as the source for hundreds of startup companies -- dubbed "Fairchildren" -- and the catalyst for the startup economy that defines Silicon Valley to this day.
Several recordings of Noyce, who left Fairchild with Moore and died in 1990, are included in the documentary. "I felt that I had a commitment to Shockley and I wanted to do everything that I could to make the organization work, so I felt that my first obligation was to try and talk those seven folks into not leaving," Noyce said. "When I failed in that, I felt that I should join with them."
"At Fairchild we had a clean slate," said Moore. "We had an empty building and we could do it the way we thought was the right way to do it."
Robert Noyce: The Mayor of Silicon Valley
Much of the documentary focuses on Noyce, an early transistor engineer who met Moore after both joined Shockley. "Bob was the kind of guy everyone liked when they first met him," said Moore. "He had the kind of personality that came across very smoothly. As such, it opened doors and of course he was brilliant, which helped."
Moore recalled a time at Fairchild when Noyce made a gutsy business deal to sell new transistors for a dollar, which today would be about $8. "Bob was taking a risk that made us all gulp at the time," said Moore. "But it turned out to be the proper solution."
Moore recollected another daring leap instigated by Noyce in 1968. "
I'm sick of hearing about pioneers who were really just exploitative suits in the right place at the right time.
Your comments above seem to lack any awareness and seem to be intellectually lazy.
Anyone can be an ivory tower intellectual or armchair quarterback. There is applied science and pure science, and the ones that get things done (applied science) and produce a successful product are the alphas of this world. Anyone can think something, dream something, scheme something, have a point of view.
The ones that can take an idea from their head, bang the engineering into reality and do it in a way that people will want to buy it is exceedingly rare. And you seem to dismiss this concept and not be aware of it. Oh yeah ... who cares if someone "likes" $INSERT_NAME, has nothing to do with science or engineering and all the likability in the world doesn't mean someone can do math/engineering/product planning.
Here it is:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/content/noyce.html
"âoeEvery time we came up with a new idea we spawned two or three companies that would try to exploit it" I mean, doesn't this obvious violation of the holy IP rights monopoly lead to the destruction of western society and the end of all innovation? Oh whoops, it did the opposite in this case... Same as how when software patents didn't exist yet, and same as when wheels and axles couldn't be patented...
My dad bought a house on the edge of a cherry orchard, eventually Fairchild built a plant across the street and then promptly leaked solvent into the groundwater. My sister and several of her friends ended up with large amounts of settlement money due to possible health effects. The Santa Clara Valley was known as the valley of heart's delight and was world renowned for it's stone fruit, especially apricots. It was fun growing up surrounded by tech companies, on the other hand some of the world's best farmland is now fallow.
now it's financial engineering.
and social distortion programming. the number of start-ups working on social apps which look to be completely worthless is mind-boggling, and they are getting bought up all the time for ridiculous somes of money. we're all going to write social networking apps which try to sell each other social networking apps.
America the land where people made things is disappearing and we will absolutely be worse off for it.
Absolute statements are never true
Hello,
The PBS documentary sounds pretty interesting, but the history of Silicon Valley is older and more interesting than that. Professor Steve Blank is a Bay Area academic and entrepreneur who has chronicled the secret history of Silicon Valley, which dates back to electronic warfare in WW2 and moves forward from there to involve Stanford University, the Space Race, the CIA and even the California State franchise tax board (not an organization one would normally associate with any sort of progress).
Professor Blank gives an hour-long talk on the subject, which is fascinating. Here are a few links to various versions of that talk:
Extremely interesting stuff, and highly-recommend watching if you've ever wondered about why we even have computers today.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Low taxes, low cost of living, great climate, great freeways, first class universities, an influx of returning GIs, marijuana and LSD.
Now California is verging on a failed state. High taxes (a rate of 9.5% for those millionaires making $48,942), high cost of living, a bloated state bureaucracy in league with public employee unions to bankrupt the state, decaying infrastructure, a failing education system on par with Mississippi, one third of the nation's welfare recipients, an outflux of Americans and an influx of low-skill illegal aliens. The only things left are the marijuana and LSD.
The future of business in general and startups in specific are low-tax, now-state-income tax, low-regulation state like Texas and Florida.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/