Silicon Valley History

Silicon Valley is a geographical area 25 miles long, 10 miles wide, and 45 miles southeast of San Francisco, California. It is centered in Santa Clara County.

Here are some excerpts from the Silicon Valley History and Trivia Calendar (courtesy of Novatis Inc.) If you want more information on how to buy the Calendar and other Silicon Valley items, click the following link (Novatis).

Q: What major Silicon Valley company was formed in 1938 in this small Palo Alto garage?
A. Hewlett-Packard was formed by William Hewlett and David Packard in 1938 in a Palo Alto garage, now a Silicon Valley landmark. With the encouragement of Frederick Terman, then an electrical engineering professor at Stanford, and a $538 loan, the company produced its first successful product, an audio oscillator.

Q: Who was Hewlett Packard's first customer, and what was the use for its first product?
A. Hewlett-Packard's first customer was Walt Disney Company. Its first product, an oscillator shown above, was used for the sound production of the animated, feature-length movie, Fantasia.

Q: What Silicon Valley native and Nobel Prize winner came back to plant the seed that eventually grew into hundreds of other companies in Silicon Valley?
A. With his invention of the transistor at Bell Labs, William Shockley came back to his native town of Palo Alto in 1955 and started Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories nearby. This company and its successor, Fairchild Semiconductor, spawned hundreds of other companies in Silicon Valley.

Q: After ten years and millions of dollars in legal battles, who actually received the patent for the first integrated circuit?
A. Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby of Texas Instniments invented the first integrated circuit within 6 months of each other. Although Noyce's version was more readily manufacturable, it took ten years and millions of dollars in legal battles before Robert Noyce received the patent. In the end, both men were acknowledged as co-inventors.

Q: In 1967, what general manager left Fairchild Semiconductor to launch National Semiconductor?
A. Charles Sprock, the greatly respected manufacturing talent behind Fairchild, left the company to bring management to the fledgling National Semiconductor. Sprock, not happy with the dictates from the parent company, Fairchild Camera, made the fateful decision that initiated many more
"Fairchildren" defections.

Q: Who led the research team that developed Ethernet technology?
A. Bob Metcalfe led a team at Xerox PARC to a technology that enabled the networking of computers in 1973. Looking for a way to speed up the link between computers and laser printers, they created a technical triumph, cutting the time to print a 600 dpi page from 15 minutes down to 12 seconds. The research, however, became so complex that Ethernet was never introduced as a commercial product by Xerox. It took another 6 years and another company founded by Metcalfe (called 3M) to make the technology into a viable product.

Q: What company, when it went public in 1980, created over 100 paper millionaires in Silicon Valley?
A. When Apple Computer went public in 1980, it created over 100 paper millionaires. This event was due to Steve Wozniak's generosity in selling much of his stock (at $7 a share) in an effort to "redistribute the wealth" among Apple engineers. With the initial offering at $22.00 per share, Wozniak (left), age 29, had holdings worth $88 million, and Jobs, age 25, had holdings totalling $165 million. Venture capitalists, who had taken a chance on Apple, also got rich: Arthur Rock, who had invested $57,000, was now worth $14 million.

History of the Silicon Valley