The birthplace of Silicon Valley really does have an address, 391 South San Antonio Road. In fact, it has two addresses, 844 Charleston Road as well. But the San Antonio Road one is earlier by a couple of years. There will be a plaque unveiling there on Wednesday (and you are invited). Fairchild Semiconductor Back on May 9th 2009, almost a decade ago, I was blogging for EDN magazine (remember them). The post still seems to be live but all the photos I took seem to be broken links. But I found a couple of them, such as the plaque to the left. I wrote at the time: On Friday the IEEE unveiled a plaque commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first practical IC, which was created at Fairchild’s original building at 844 Charleston Road in Mountain View (it’s just off San Antonio Road near 101). The plaque was unveiled by Margaret Abe-Koga, the mayor of Mountain View who wasn’t even born back then. The story of the founding of Fairchild is well-known. Shockley apparently had an abrasive management style, and perhaps even more importantly he decided to discontinue research into silicon-based transistors. Eight key engineers decided this was the wrong decision, the "traitorous eight" and left. They struggled to get anyone to back them but eventually, Fairchild Camera and Instrument did, and Fairchild Semiconductor was formed. What I hadn't realized was what a short distance Fairchild's original building was from Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View. At that Mountain View unveiling, two of the traitorous eight were there. This is Gordon Moore and Jay Last. So we'll call them the traitorous two. This was truly the birthplace of Silicon Valley, in the sense that Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories was the first semiconductor company in the world, and it was founded here in 1956. Given that Shockley had invented the transistor at Bell Labs in New Jersey (along with Bardeen and Brattain), you'd have expected the semiconductor industry to grow up on the East Coast. But Shockley himself was raised in Palo Alto (having been born in London), and his mother still lived there. She had graduated from Stanford, became the first female US Deputy mining surveyor, and still lived in Palo Alto. Shockley himself had degrees from Caltech and MIT. There was clearly an engineering streak in the family. But his mother was sick. Shockley both missed the California weather and wanted to be near his sick mother. So he moved out here. Then he had to invent something else that is just as important in Silicon Valley. He pretty much invented the modern hi-tech start-up. None of his Bell Labs colleagues would move with him, so he hired a bunch of young PhDs, some straight out of Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Caltech. To read my post last year on Shockley, see Who Put the Silicon in Silicon Valley? Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory: 391 South San Antonio Road I few weeks ago, I got an email from Doug Fairbairn, who as the #4 employee at VLSI Technology, and the head of what was EDA (although I don't think we yet used that acronym, I think we just called it all Computer Aided Design, or CAD) was the first person who brought me to the US (and I'm still here...so now you know who to blame). He now organizes the oral history (and probably other stuff) at the Computer History Museum. For more about the museum, see their entry in my series on museums, last summer ( Computer History Museum History ). In a strange coincidence, when I went to the museum to take pictures for that blog post, I ran into him in the lobby having not seen him for years. I'll just quote from Doug's email: As veterans of Silicon Valley, you probably know that “silicon” came to this valley with William Shockley in 1956. For the first time, we are going to recognize this momentous development at the place it happened, 391 South San Antonio Rd, in Mt. View. At 3pm on August 15, the IEEE and CHM are hosting a dedication of several sculptures and plaques which are now in place at the site of Shockley’s original semiconductor lab. Prof. Jim Gibbons of Stanford, who worked with Shockley beginning in 1957, will be the keynote speaker at the session. I guess these will be one of these unveilings like when politicians close a new bridge that has been open for weeks in order to "open" it, since Doug sent me a picture of the plaques. I believe the plaque below was on the original building (which was torn down to build the new complex that now occupies the site) but was preserved and mounted on the new building. You'll have to show up to find out what the new one looks like. Or wait for my post about what was said that afternoon later in the week. If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are a veteran of Silicon Valley. Anyway, you are invited to attend the event that runs from 3-5pm (and there is a second, also free, event at the CHM starting at 6pm and titled Tomorrow's Computers: More Moore? ). If you want to go, then please register on the CHM website registration page (it's free). Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.![]()
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