Once upon a time in Silicon Valley?

The Fairchild 8: Gordon Moore, Sheldon Roberts, Eugene Kleiner, Robert Noyce, Victor Grinich, Julius Blank, Jean Hoerni, and Jay Last. Photo courtesy Wayne Miller/Magnum Photos.

Hello again,

after a long summer break, I’m slowly returning to the computer screen.

During this vacation, I talked to many interesting people and read books as well as articles. I really like the history of Silicon Valley (I’ll do my best to write more about it in the future, especially about the beautiful photos from the golden era of Silicon Valley taken by Doug Menuez. He for example documented Steve Jobs’ new company NeXT Inc. and its development and launch of the computer NeXT Computer), so I decided to write a few words about it in this post today.

I was very interested in the beginning of Silicon Valley, what it looked like and what was happening there. It turns out that I managed to travel back in time to the year 1948, many links were not working, but eventually I was able to watch that movie:

As it turns out, this place used to be called “Valley of the Heart’s Delight“. I encourage you to watch and read the extensive article (https://www.wired.com/2015/05/why-silicon-valley-will-continue-to-rule/), that also refers to this topic, as well as to why Silicon Valley is what it is now.

The name “Silicon Valley,” was popularised in 1971. But everything has started at 1955, when one of the inventors of the transistor, William Shockley moved back to Palo Alto. The tech Shockley gave his team played a big role in shaping the Valley’s direction.: the transistor. Pretty much everything in today’s world and Silicon Valley goes back to that transistor (including first modern startups e.g. Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National or AMD).

Inspired by the story above, I wish you success in building history through new solutions and companies. And allow me to quote Steve Jobs:

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you.​

All best,

Łukasz.