The Birth Of Silicon Valley (timeline)

They anchored the start of Silicon Valley with Hewlett Packard. I think that Federal Telegraph 1909 founding is a much better starting point, See Timothy J. Sturgeon’s "How Silicon Valley Came to Be" where he notes:<p>The fact that the San Francisco Bay Area’s electronics industry began close to the turn of the Twentieth Century should lay to rest the notion that industrialization and urbanization on the scale of Silicon Valley can be quickly induced in other areas. Silicon Valley is nearly 100 years old. It grew out of a historically and geographically specific context that cannot be recreated. The lesson for planners and economic developers is to focus on long-term, not short-term developmental trajectories. Silicon Valley was the fastest growing region in the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s; but that growth came out of a place, not a technology. Silicon Valley’s development is intimately entwined with the long history of industrialization and innovation in the larger San Francisco Bay Area.<p>See <a href="http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/00-014.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/00-014.pdf</a>

From Varian Associates, the Varians were originally Irish, Ginzton was originally Ukrainian.<p>Shockley was British.<p>Of the Traitorous Eight, Grinich was Croatian, Hoerni was Swiss, and Kleiner (yes, that Kleiner) was Austrian.<p>Good thing they got visas.

When I first moved here my favorite introduction to the valleys history was Steve Blanks The Secret History of Silicon Valley.<p>It's well worth the hour <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo</a>

They should include Ampex, a company founded 1944 to reverse engineer German recording technology.

I have always wondered when the cycle became self-fulfilling. From the timeline, it seems the turning point might have been late 50s and early 60s when you had the venture capital firms start to take hold with interest in small tech companies.

How is Silicon Valley difference from the startup scene in, say, Austin or Boston?