Silicon Valley
to
Internet Valley: Timeline of Key
Events
A few points from recent IT history...
by
Gregory Gromov
From the beginning of IT-history, a great deal of the IT key-solutions have
been reaching worldwide market from California's
Silicon Valley. There
are several different approaches to describe this general IT-tendency
First
level: Community |
Second
level:
Tech-TimeLine |
Third
level:
Financial Concern |
The first level usually
focuses on Silicon Valley's professional community. |
The second level focuses
on the main points of IT history. From this point the Silicon Valley is
a high-tech region where the following key IT-solutions were launched: |
The third level of
Silicon Valley history focuses on financial concerns |
About
half century ago Stanford University
(Palo-Alto, California) had some financial problems.
Fred
Terman tried to solve the problems by leasing part of the
university's land to high-tech companies for 99 years.
A
quarter of century later this decision was called Silicon Valley's
starting point. |
1908
the first vacuum tube triode was invented by Lee de
Forest. He arrived in San Francisco Bay Area in 1910, and worked
for the Federal Telegraph Company, which began developing the first
global radio communications system in 1912.
1971
the first microprocessor - 4004-chip,
Intel,
1976
the first Personal Computer - Apple-1,
Apple Computer, |
PC revolution . December 1980, Apple goes public. Morgan Stanley and Co.
and Hambrecht & Quist underwrite an initial public offering of 4.6
million shares of Apple common stock at a price of $22 per share.
Everyshare is bought within minutes of the offering, making this the
largest public offering since Ford went public in 1956
WWW
revolution. August 1995, Netscape Communications Corp., a 16-month-old
Mountain View company was going public. Netscape issued 5 million shares
to the public and kept another 33 million for executives, venture
capitalists and other early backers. August,10 closing price left the
company with market valuation of $1.96 billion " It was the biggest IPO
in history ... |
The phrase Silicon
Valley first appeared in 1971 in a series of articles that journalist
Don C Hoefler
wrote for Electronic News, a weekly industry tabloid. |
It looks like the story
is not completed yet... |
Gross Revenue: Now about
4,000 IT-related companies located along Highway 101 from
San Francisco to
San Jose generate
approximately $200 billions in IT-related revenue annually |
William
Hewlett used the
supernova
concept to clarify his viewpoint to Silicon Valley history and named Lee
de Forest the father of Silicon Valley. |
From our
viewpoint the supernova is not merely a literature
metaphor...
"For a few decades after invention of the first radio-amplifier the
total level of radio-emission from earth increased millions of times in
comparison with the normal level of emission of a 300 Kelvin-degree
planet. For the shortest time the Earth became #1 source of the
radio-emission in the solar system "(Joseph Shklovski, 1981).
So, if somebody is looking through
a radio-telescope to the Solar system from another part of the galaxy,
he can see the radio explosion like the birth of a new star on the Earth
planet. |
...after all, do you have any idea what kind of astro-physical
measurement can detect the other dimensions of the explosion triggered
by computer as an intellectual amplifier. Then please
share
it with us at least. |
It was not too difficult to predict,
where the next IT-wave would come from.
To take a look at some of the new
areas of business development of
Silicon Valley Companies
was enough.
However, to predict where the
next IT- revolution will come from is no easy task now:
|
The
WWW project was
launched in Europe (March1989),
The
original version of user friendly Web brouser -
Mosaic was developed in USA IL (Jan1993).
Silicon Valley is explosively
expanding its geographical borders:
|
It
was only a small part of
Palo-Alto 's Stanford University Park just half century ago.
It
has become one of the fastest growing regions of California now.... According
to the "Silicon Valley Joint Venture Index 2000"
the Silicon Valley's cities were located around the
South side of San Francisco Bay:
10 years later the above viewpoint of Silicon Valley
Joint Venture was changed:
The geographical
boundaries of Silicon Valley vary. The region’s core has been defined as
Santa Clara County plus adjacent parts of San Mateo, Alameda and Santa
Cruz Counties. In order to reflect the geographic expansion of the
region’s driving industries and employment, the 2011 Index includes all
of San Mateo County. Silicon Valley is defined as the following cities:
Santa Clara County (all) Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los
Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Mountain
View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale Alameda
County Fremont, Newark, Union City San Mateo County (all) Atherton,
Belmont, Brisbane, Broadmoor, Burlingame, Colma, Daly City, East Palo
Alto, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Millbrae,
Pacifica, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos, San
Mateo, South San Francisco, Woodside Santa Cruz County Scotts Valley
Santa Clara San Jose Newark Fremont Union City.
The Silicon Valley Joint Venture Index 2011
And
there will not be any geographical borders for Silicon Valley's future,
because... it's transforming itself to
Internet Valley,
which is destroying any geographical limits for the new kind of human
being. |
Timeline of events in the 100 years leading to Silicon Valley’s creation
1848—the first year of the Gold Rush. All over the world spread rumors of
fabulous gold reserves discovered on the west coast of North America. Gold was
discovered in El Dorado County, not far from Sacramento, the current state
capital of California, and “El Dorado” entered the vocabulary of
treasure-seekers around the world.
1849—the first tens of thousands of the more adventurous of gold-seekers from
all over America arrive in California, in what was at that time still a
territory of Mexico. Not counting the Native Americans, only about 2000
Americans lived there at the time... Thus, the first tens of thousands of
California gold seekers went down in history as the “Forty-niners”.
1850—California gains statehood, becomes known as "The Golden State” ( California is also known variously as The Land of Milk and Honey, The El Dorado State, and The Grape State).
1853—The number of new arrivals to California exceeds 300 thousand people...
1872—as a result of the state’s experience during the regulation of the more
violent of business disagreements during the first two decades of the state’s
existence (as noted earlier, this experience was accrued particularly quickly in
the first days of the Gold Rush, when the groundwork was laid for California’s
government) the California Civil Code was adopted, in which the state’s
lawmakers included a special provision guaranteeing the freedom of employees in
the state of California to choose their own place of work.
1891—Stanford University is founded by former governor of California Leland
Stanford.
1910 — Lee de Forest arrives in San Francisco Bay Area. He was by then
already well-known as the inventor of the triode (US Patent 879532, February
1908). Of all the influential inventions in the development of electronics and
radio technology in the first half of the 20th century, the triode turned out to
be the most critical component in the development of transcontinental telephone
communications, radio, television, radar and early digital electronics.
1951—Stanford Industrial Park is established as a high tech center by
businesses working in close partnership with the university. Among the first
companies to rent space in the Park were Varian Associates, General Electric,
and Eastman Kodak.
1956—William Shockley, co-inventor of the semiconductor triode arrived in San
Francisco Bay Area and founds Shockley Semiconductor as a division of Beckman
Instruments in Mountain View. On the road to Silicon Valley’s development, the
baton was thus passed from Lee de Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube triode, to
Shockley, inventor of the solid-state triode - transistor.
1957—The “Traitorous Eight” leave Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild
Semiconductor.
1968—Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce leave Fairchild Semiconductor to found
Intel.
1971—term “Silicon Valley” by the
press.
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