Gizmodo: silicon valley

The Birthplace of Silicon Valley Is a Palo Alto Garage

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:30:00 EDT

This is the Palo Alto, CA garage where two young Stanford engineering grads named Bill Hewlett and David Packard started building what would one day become the world's largest PC manufacturer. In 2000, HP turned it into a museum.

We've known about this garage for awhile, but we're glad CNET brought it back to our attention. Given HP's status now as kind of an old man company, making personal computers of reasonable quality and negligible excitement along with printers and other peripherals, we tend to forget how big a deal they really are. HP is the number one PC manufacturer in the world; their market share is nearly four times that of Apple and consistently ahead of rival Dell, and they've actually been putting out some nice products lately, like the begging-for-Windows-7 TouchSmart series and the svelte DV2 laptop. They're credited with creating Silicon Valley, and the American technology industry certainly wouldn't be the same without them. So it's really interesting to see where this pivotal company got its start, especially since its story is just as grassroots as Apple's or Microsoft's. And like them, it started with a couple of brilliant guys and some innovative hard work.

Hewlett and Packard rented the garage way back in 1938 to build audio oscillators with a new, more efficient design, a business that quickly expanded into all means of electronic hardware (and later, software). HP was brilliantly managed; they partnered with Sony and other Japanese companies as well as Disney, absorbed valuable component makers, and would later appoint the first woman CEO of a company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Carly Fiorina.

In 2000, HP bought the garage and its corresponding house where the company's founders lived while they worked, and turned it into a museum of sorts. They recreated the garage exactly how it was at the time, with the same decor and audio oscillator parts strewn about. It's not open to the public, since it's just a house on a residential street in Palo Alto (and HP is nothing if not neighborly), but it's definitely someplace we'd like to take a look at. Love them or hate them, HP is top dog in the computer hardware world, and it's a treat to see how it all began. [CNET]

SF and Bay Area 3G Data Test: AT&T, Sprint and Verizon

Andi Wang — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST

SF intern Andi Wang set out to test over three afternoons, covering a wider range than most testers by hitting not just SF but Marin and a good bit of Silicon Valley.

Googleplex (Wednesday, 1pm)
Having been born and raised in Silicon Valley, I like to brag that Google's Headquarters is just 10 minutes away from my house. Even though the Googleplex itself isn't all that interesting, it's incredibly ginormous, and you get free Naked Juice and candy at the Visitor's Center! Plus, it's Google!

Golden Gate Bridge (Thursday, 3:30pm)
The Golden Gate Bridge is what connects San Francisco to the North Bay—without it, the city would be a secluded island, susceptible to Cloverfield-like attacks. Oh, wait, we're NOT on an island?! My bad...

Oracle Arena (Friday, 12:30am)
Across the street from where the Oakland A's play ball lies the home of the Golden State Warriors. Oakland is in the East Bay, an area I like to avoid because of my allergy to bullets; but my boyfriend took me here anyway for a concert where we rocked out to The Killers (and where I got my mack on with Andrew McMahon from Jack's Mannequin)!

Marin Civic Center (Friday, 10:30am)
In 1997, The Civic Center served as a prominent location in the movie Gattaca. Ten years later, the Peking Acrobats dazzled the hell out of me at a show here, which made me believe I could be a Chinese acrobat too! That didn't work out so well, so I now stick to attending Ryan Adams's concerts at the Civic Center instead.

Golden Gate Park (Friday, 1pm)
My lover lives across the street from Golden Gate Park, where the homeless people show me their wieners, hippies have drum circles on sunny Saturdays, and sketchy men sell me beers from their rolling suitcases. Despite the crazies, it is a nice place to take a stroll on a lazy Sunday to the Botanical Gardens, deYoung Museum, and the Academy of Sciences.

Results
Though AT&T only beat the others twice, it handily won the upload contest. Peaks for all three carriers were really great, but there seems to be some volatility in more congested areas. Blam thinks AT&T's Bay Area coverage map looks like leopard spots, and our tests justify his gripes (though the same could be said for Verizon).

Back to main Coast-to-Coast 3G Data Test story

Silicon Valley's Birthplace of the Semiconductor: Now a Fruit and Vegetable Stand

John Mahoney — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:00:00 EDT

We all owe a lot to this place. The birth of the world's first silicon chip happened here, and now, it's a nice place to pick up some fresh produce. Bits has a great history of the site—now known as the Fiesta Super Market at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View (home also to the big G). It used to be the world's first semiconductor lab, established by the American physicist William Shockley and where the founders of Fairchild and Intel got their chops. But now? Just a couple of marks on the sidewalk indicate its past, among all the fine fruits and veggies.

Silicon Valley historical tourists (they exist) used to find a sign with information detailing the site's history, which seems to have gotten chucked in the remodeling:

“I have no idea what happened to it,” said Pablo Martinez, the owner of Fiesta Super Market, talking about the Shockley sign.

And here is what the "three to five people" per month see when they visit the nearby home of Fairchild Semiconductor:Interesting to see how a tech culture so caught up in the future deals with its historical past. Much more good reading over at Bits. [Bits Blog]

Pity the Poor Silicon Valley "Working Class" Millionaires

Matt Buchanan — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 10:00:10 EDT

It's tough to be a millionaire in Silicon Valley nowadays, slavishly breaking your back in the "Silicon Valley salt mines." As one such "salt miner," Hal Steger, puts it in a NYT story detailing their worked-to-the-bone lives, "a few million doesn't go as far as it used to. Maybe in the '70s, a few million bucks meant 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'...But not anymore." He's right, his $1.3 million house and $3.5 million net worth is chump change, really. I sneer at his poverty. And he and his single-digit millionaire buddies know I and other real millionaires do, forcing them to put in 60-hour work weeks in their padded leather chairs.

It's not their fault though, surrounded by people who are worth ten or a hundred times as much as they are, living in a culture constantly pressuring them to make more. And their bastard kids always want "the latest fashions their peers are wearing and the most popular high-ticket toys." The rest of us just don't know what that's like. [NYT]