Why Silicon Valley is here

One radio engineer had a plan. And it worked.

Today, one of the hottest parts of the global economy is in Silicon Valley. And it’s thanks to, in large part, a radio engineer who had a plan.

As the above video shows, Fred Terman was key in building a technological hub in an area best known for its prunes. Thanks to his work developing Stanford Research Park, a new cycle of business innovation began and has continued to this day.

Watch the above video to learn more.

Further reading:

Here’s a full 1969 interview with Terman:

Read Hoefler’s original article about Silicon Valley in which he coined the term:

Here’s Palo Alto’s survey of Stanford Research Park:

[jacobsemus]

Another reason is that California does not enforce non-compete agreements. This allows talented employees to jump easily between companies or leave to start their own in a really efficient way.

[viking]

It shows how a university can change its surroundings drastically in all the fields of science and business.

[kentonyc]

I need to point out that many farms that used to dot the area in what's now known as Silicon Valley were Japanese American farms, which, through the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, were taken away from Japanese Americans. I think it's a part of the history worth remembering.

[paullawler]

Left out what might be the most important factor in the Valley's success. Stanford U had a different approach to intellectual property transfer. Students and professors could invent something on campus and then use the invention to open a business while maintaining ownership of that invention. Most colleges insist that the property is theirs and the inventor doesn't enjoy the fruits of their labor.

[kentslocum]

The same thing happened with Disney. Disneyland was built it the middle of orange groves. Disney World was built on a swamp. But once tourists came, more theme parks and businesses popped up nearby, thus perpetuating the cycle.

[prblackhawk]

As a bay area native, it makes me happy to hear this. The amount of educated individuals here is unmatched. Universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCSF, and SJSU among many others provide many opportunities for personal development close to home.

[Chario_]

Fun fact: the soil in the Bay Area is considered so fertile that it is said it can be used to grow almost anything. As great as Silicon Valley has been in creating new technologies, it's kind of sad how some of the most fertile soil in the state, if not the entire country is now unusable due the all the urban sprawl. Makes me wonder what things would have been like if Silicon Valley had developed in a much denser fashion to preserve the farmland, instead of just spreading out across the entire Bay Area

[Rituraj]

A lot of the tenants at Stanford Industrial Park decided to come there because New York`s really didn't have office space available during that period.

[twin_rivers]

I currently live in San Jose as a Bay Area native and this was an excellent video, amazing to see how Stanford helped build up this area, couldn’t believe that this was once mainly farm land

[Zeyev]

Greetings from Mountain View. You briefly mentioned another key player, The University of California, by showing a headline about Cal and The Farm but didn't mention how closely the universities and their students collaborated. Sure, we are rivals in many ways but also best buds in so many other ways.

[MatthewWingard]

I was always under the impression that Shockley chose Palo Alto because he wanted to be close to his ailing mother who lived nearby. And that had it not been for this fact, Shockley semiconductors would have been established in the Los Angeles area thus changing history as we know it. So I think a large part of this story really comes down to the random connections of family (although the moves made by Stanford certainly facilitated the growth of silicon valley)

[alexaramachandran]

As a CS graduate from Stanford, the entrepreneurial spirit is stronger than ever. Many consider it more prestigious to drop out and found a start-up than it is to join Google or Microsoft. There are courses specifically designed to spur startups, even partnering with big tech companies to provide advisors for school projects.

It is truly a place like no other — partying at the frat where Instagram was made, staying in the dorm where Snapchat was made. It can be a toxic environment of always trying to find the next big thing, but I am endlessly grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be taught by Turing Award winners and people that have changed the course of society.

[skpjoecoursegold]

I was 4, 1959, when we moved to San Jose, Dad worked for IBM and was all over the Valley working on those big computers. He worked at SLAC to take care of the IBM computers, as one of many accounts. He graduated from CAL.

[ziqi]

Silicon Valley has only one flaw: rush hour traffic.

By no means a unique problem, but I wish trains and apartment complexes were more common and AFFORDABLE here.

[brennanwilder]

I feel like this is forgetting that U.C. Berkeley is also an hour away from Silicon Valley

[mightytinymikey]

Somehow overlooked that Berkeley was found in 1849...36-years before Stanford. It was producing Engineers for the region long before Stanford. True the cash of Leeland Stanford was a major factor, but let's not forget the countless Engineers that were already living and working in the region (unlike all but 2 or 3 regions of the USA at that time in history).

[dr.gregmaguire]

This oft repeated history is inaccurate. Physics in California was put on the map in the 1930s by UC Berkeley's Nobel winning technology, the cyclotron used to split the atom. UC Berkeley developed (1963) the country's first lab where you could make integrated circuits (first made at Berkeley by Don Pederson), years before MIT and Stanford. The critical computer prototyping of microcircuits using SPICE was also developed at UC Berkeley. Within 10 years, every circuit design engineer in the world was using SPICE. As a public university, Berkeley made SPICE available to everyone (opensource). RISC, the 3-dimensional transistor, and RISC-V are all Berkeley inventions. Among many others in the field, Gordon Moore is a Berkeley alum.

[jaywise]

This report falls short of how SV developed. You cannot talk about SV WITHOUT talking about San Jose State. You also neglected to mention the UC system development, and California's commitment to keep college education affordable.

[Eric_In_SF]

One of the fun things is finding small groves that are still leftover all over the peninsula and the valley with free fruit and vegetables.

[oledshwfgk]

What was up with the California pizza kitchen?