Many (most?) people put the 'start' of the technology culture in Silicon Valley around the same time that Stanford started the Applied Electronics Lab [1]
IMO, Silicon Valley's "early days" starts with the founding of HP.
In any case, I don't think 1986 can be considered "Early days" by any stretch of the imagination. Even if you're just focused on the modern era of the Valley, I don't think you can reasonably make a case for anything earlier than the mid-1970s. To put the dates in some perspective (not for you but those who think 1986 are the "early days"), Jobs had already been pushed out of Apple by 1986.
The founding of HP is an interesting place to start, most people put the 'Silicon' in Silicon Valley with the founding of Fairchild [1] in 1956, it was the making of transistors, and later integrated circuits which really drove investment. I didn't arrive until '84 nearly 30 years later and in what was clearly the twilight of semiconductors as the driving force (also in a pretty big recession). HP's founding in '47 pre-dates Shockley coming to the valley but all of them were friends with Terman who created the Applied Electronics lab.
Some people use 1971, the introduction of the Intel 4004 as the seminal moment, but those folks are more 'computer' focused and less 'technology' focused.
The bottom line is of course that was definitely wayyyy before '86 :-)
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That was exactly my thought. Early days of Silicon Valley reaches as far back as the 1930s.
Learn your history, whippersnappers, and get off my lawn.
Many (most?) people put the 'start' of the technology culture in Silicon Valley around the same time that Stanford started the Applied Electronics Lab [1]
[1] http://steveblank.com/2009/08/17/stanford-crosses-the-rubico...
YMMV I guess.
IMO, Silicon Valley's "early days" starts with the founding of HP.
In any case, I don't think 1986 can be considered "Early days" by any stretch of the imagination. Even if you're just focused on the modern era of the Valley, I don't think you can reasonably make a case for anything earlier than the mid-1970s. To put the dates in some perspective (not for you but those who think 1986 are the "early days"), Jobs had already been pushed out of Apple by 1986.
The founding of HP is an interesting place to start, most people put the 'Silicon' in Silicon Valley with the founding of Fairchild [1] in 1956, it was the making of transistors, and later integrated circuits which really drove investment. I didn't arrive until '84 nearly 30 years later and in what was clearly the twilight of semiconductors as the driving force (also in a pretty big recession). HP's founding in '47 pre-dates Shockley coming to the valley but all of them were friends with Terman who created the Applied Electronics lab.
Some people use 1971, the introduction of the Intel 4004 as the seminal moment, but those folks are more 'computer' focused and less 'technology' focused.
The bottom line is of course that was definitely wayyyy before '86 :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor
Steve has a fantastic hour long talk given at the Computer History Museum and shown on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo