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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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