Silicon Valley  to  Internet Valley: Timeline of Key Events

A few points  from recent IT history...  

 by Gregory Gromov

From the beginning of IT-history, a great deal of the IT key-solutions have been reaching worldwide market from California's Silicon Valley. There are several different approaches to describe this general IT-tendency

 

First level: Community	Second level: Tech-TimeLine	Third level: Financial Concern
The first level usually focuses on Silicon Valley's professional community.	The second level focuses on the main points of IT history. From this point the Silicon Valley is a high-tech region where the following key IT-solutions were launched:	The third level of Silicon Valley history focuses on financial concerns
About half century ago Stanford University (Palo-Alto, California) had some financial problems.  Fred Terman tried to solve the problems by leasing part of the university's land to high-tech companies for 99 years.  A quarter of century later this decision was called Silicon Valley's starting point.	1908 the first  vacuum tube triode was invented by Lee de Forest. He  arrived in San Francisco Bay Area in 1910, and worked for the Federal Telegraph Company, which began developing the first global radio communications system in 1912. 1971 the first microprocessor - 4004-chip, Intel,  1976 the first Personal Computer - Apple-1, Apple Computer,	PC revolution . December 1980, Apple goes public. Morgan Stanley and Co. and Hambrecht & Quist underwrite an initial public offering of 4.6 million shares of Apple common stock at a price of $22 per share. Everyshare is bought within minutes of the offering, making this the largest public offering since Ford went public in 1956 WWW revolution. August 1995, Netscape Communications Corp., a 16-month-old Mountain View company was going public. Netscape issued 5 million shares to the public and kept another 33 million for executives, venture capitalists and other early backers. August,10 closing price left the company with market valuation of $1.96 billion " It was the biggest IPO in history ...
The phrase Silicon Valley first appeared in 1971 in a series of articles that journalist Don C Hoefler wrote for Electronic News, a weekly industry tabloid.	It looks like the story is not completed yet...	Gross Revenue: Now about 4,000 IT-related companies located along Highway 101 from San Francisco to San Jose generate approximately $200 billions in IT-related revenue annually

William Hewlett used the supernova concept to clarify his viewpoint to Silicon Valley history and named Lee de Forest the father of Silicon Valley.

...after all, do you have any idea what kind of astro-physical measurement can detect the other dimensions of the explosion triggered by computer as an intellectual amplifier. Then please share it with us at least.

The WWW project was launched in Europe (March1989),   The original version of user friendly Web brouser - Mosaic was developed in USA IL (Jan1993).   Silicon Valley is explosively expanding its geographical borders:

It was only a small part of Palo-Alto 's Stanford University Park just half century ago.  It has become one of the fastest growing regions of California now....  According to the "Silicon Valley Joint Venture Index 2000"  the  Silicon Valley's cities   were located around the South side of San Francisco Bay:  10 years later the above viewpoint of Silicon Valley Joint Venture was changed:   The geographical boundaries of Silicon Valley vary. The region’s core has been defined as Santa Clara County plus adjacent parts of San Mateo, Alameda and Santa Cruz Counties. In order to reflect the geographic expansion of the region’s driving industries and employment, the 2011 Index includes all of San Mateo County. Silicon Valley is defined as the following cities: Santa Clara County (all) Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale Alameda County Fremont, Newark, Union City San Mateo County (all) Atherton, Belmont, Brisbane, Broadmoor, Burlingame, Colma, Daly City, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Pacifica, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Mateo, South San Francisco, Woodside Santa Cruz County Scotts Valley Santa Clara San Jose Newark Fremont Union City.   The Silicon Valley Joint Venture  Index 2011   And there will not be any geographical borders for Silicon Valley's future, because... it's transforming itself to Internet Valley, which is destroying any geographical limits for the new kind of human being.

 Timeline of events in the 100 years leading to Silicon Valley’s creation

1848—the first year of the Gold Rush. All over the world spread rumors of fabulous gold reserves discovered on the west coast of North America. Gold was discovered in El Dorado County, not far from Sacramento, the current state capital of California, and “El Dorado” entered the vocabulary of treasure-seekers around the world.

1849—the first tens of thousands of the more adventurous of gold-seekers from all over America arrive in California, in what was at that time still a territory of Mexico. Not counting the Native Americans, only about 2000 Americans lived there at the time... Thus, the first tens of thousands of California gold seekers went down in history as the “Forty-niners”.

1850—California gains statehood, becomes known as "The Golden State” ( California is also known variously as The Land of Milk and Honey, The El Dorado State, and The Grape State).

1853—The number of new arrivals to California exceeds 300 thousand people...

1872—as a result of the state’s experience during the regulation of the more violent of business disagreements during the first two decades of the state’s existence (as noted earlier, this experience was accrued particularly quickly in the first days of the Gold Rush, when the groundwork was laid for California’s government) the California Civil Code was adopted, in which the state’s lawmakers included a special provision guaranteeing the freedom of employees in the state of California to choose their own place of work.

1891—Stanford University is founded by former governor of California Leland Stanford.

1910 — Lee de Forest arrives in San Francisco Bay Area. He was by then already well-known as the inventor of the triode (US Patent 879532, February 1908). Of all the influential inventions in the development of electronics and radio technology in the first half of the 20th century, the triode turned out to be the most critical component in the development of transcontinental telephone communications, radio, television, radar and early digital electronics.

1951—Stanford Industrial Park is established as a high tech center by businesses working in close partnership with the university. Among the first companies to rent space in the Park were Varian Associates, General Electric, and Eastman Kodak.

1956—William Shockley, co-inventor of the semiconductor triode arrived in San Francisco Bay Area and founds Shockley Semiconductor as a division of Beckman Instruments in Mountain View. On the road to Silicon Valley’s development, the baton was thus passed from Lee de Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube triode, to Shockley, inventor of the solid-state triode - transistor.

1957—The “Traitorous Eight” leave Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild Semiconductor.

1968—Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce leave Fairchild Semiconductor to found Intel.

1971—term “Silicon Valley” by the press.

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