Silicon Valley: How Stanford, science, and war made tech history | Margaret O'Mara | Big Think
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
- Silicon Valley: How Stanford, science, and war made tech history
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In the first part of the 20th century, Silicon Valley wasn't known as the "Silicon Valley." It was the "Santa Clara Valley." It was an agricultural region, best known for being the "Prune Capital of America.
In terms of getting its start, Sherman Fairchild created Fairchild Semiconductor in the area because he had inherited a lot of money from IBM stock. In this way, IBM is sort of granddaddy of all computer companies because of this.
Remaking another Silicon Valley in the world would be tough - but not impossible. The region has become what it is today because it succeeded in a certain kind of time.
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MARGARET O'MARA
Margaret O’Mara is the author of "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America." She is a professor of history at the University of Washington, where she writes and teaches about the history of U.S. politics, the growth of the high-tech economy, and the connections between the two.
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TRANSCRIPT:
MARGARET O'MARA:The first part of the 20th century, Silicon Valley wasn't known as Silicon Valley. It was the Santa Clara Valley. It was a agricultural region. It was best known for being the prune capital of America. It was where the fruit was grown, and canned, and harvested. So it really was off to the side of the main action. Where the real turning point for the Valley was the 1940s, World War II. It was the turning point for California and the Pacific West. The Pacific Theater brought thousands of servicemen streaming through ports like San Francisco. It built up the military installations up and down the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as up and down the West Coast. And then after the war, this continued with the Cold War and a great deal of military activity.
California getting a huge amount of this spending, of military spending, that Dwight Eisenhower later memorably labeled the military-industrial complex. And California was one of its capitals. So in the middle of all this is this little university, Stanford, which had been founded in the 1890s by a railroad baron and his wife. Stanford is an unusual place. Unlike the colleges of the Ivy League, which were founded in colonial times to educate future clergymen and lawyers-- kind of liberal arts institutions, Stanford was started with a very practical mission in mind. In its founding grant it says, to the effect, "Bring something useful into the world." And so Stanford always had a technical bent. The sciences and engineering were always a focus.
And as the government kind of ramped up this unprecedented spending on engineering, on science as America entered the nuclear age, the leaders of Stanford, notably its dean of engineering, an electrical engineer named Fred Terman, recognized there was, as Terman put it, a wonderful opportunity that Stanford could take advantage of. Terman had spent World War II in Boston. He was working for the government. Working as part of the many, many thousands of academics, scientists, and engineers who had gone to work for the Office of Wartime Research and Development, which was run by Terman's graduate mentor from MIT, a guy named Vinnie [? Verbush. ?] and Terman realized that everything was going to change for the sciences, that there was this big opportunity. And for Stanford, a place where he had grown up-- he was a faculty kid. His father had been a professor there, too. Palo Alto was home. He wrote to a friend during the war, "Stanford has this opportunity to become like Harvard, if we take advantage of this.
Or it could just kind of be a place like Dartmouth, which is respected, but not important to the national conversation." I don't know how people at Dartmouth would feel about that, but he was being a little-- there was a little bit snark there. So Terman comes back. And partnering with the then-president of the university, Wallace Sterling, who was a historian, I like to always add, they really remade Stanford's whole curriculum to beef up the physics department to create whole programs that were designed to work with industry, with these new defense industries that are growing up in California and in the Bay Area. And to really tailor programs so that they are training undergraduates and graduates in the sciences and engineering to go out and go into this work of these new electronics companies that are booming in this post-war period. It was something that no other university has done really, before or since. And that's one thing that set the Valley apart...
For the full transcript, check out bigthink.com/videos/silicon-v...
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What do you think has shaped tech history?
A more accurate version about why Silicon Valley is where it is can be found in Steve Blank's lecture series "Secret History of Silicon Valley".
Professor O'Mara was my favorite professor at the University of Washington. Every class was fascinating and I highly recommend her books if you have a chance to read them. I was never interested in tech history until taking her classes
Love how she tells the story!
I thought this was fascinating. Thank you so much!
All the while Reagan's war on drugs and poverty gave birth to one of the worst ghettos in America right next door to all of this. Often left out of the conversation is that Palo Alto's neighbor East Palo Alto became the nations homicide capitol in the early 90's. And it's not over, gentrification is pushing the local residents out.
Collateral damage to a booming local economy that continues to thrive.
That was great and informative.
Glad that you've found the video informative, Avicenna!
Best (non-Michelle) Big Think video in a while!
Sebastian Elytron agree
More to come, Sebastian!
*It's surprising how much technology war has brought us...*
Brains Applied - Unraveling The Human Mind Necessity is the mother of invention breh.
There's more information in this 10 minute video that can help me with my project then all these stupid internet articles have been looking up.
reason there is shortage of good crop growing regions - cities are built on them. Get science to figure that out.
William Shockley also advocated for eugenics and studied the link between race and IQ scores. Interesting how someone so smart can also have such radical ideas and concerns about protecting the human race.. he basically predicted the movie "Idocracy" in real life.
I watched the whole video because of the comments.
The hard technology is long gone from the valley. Taiwan runs the foundries and the Netherlands builds their equipment
👌 Tough times never last, but tough people do. The best young entrepreneur ever @evenkingsfall (his insta) says you have to THINK BIG to WIN BIG! Always keep that vision! Looking forward to your next video 🖤
Boooo
Are there two different histories in the world Tech and the other overall history? He loved his mother, not the same thing as the "smarmy" "mother's boy" smear you tried to use. Why slam him for taking care of his mother? For a woman to use that sort of slur gives feminists a bad name. Who are you anyway? Margaret O'Mara an academic, what actual experience do you have? Perhaps you should start your Big Think pieces by identifying yourself.
Huh? mother's boy was a joke. Thats a lot of projection there buddy.
I love Palo Alto real estate