Special:Badtitle/NS90:Milestone-Proposal talk:The Birthplace of Silicon Valley/Hiro Kawamoto endorsement

I enthusiastically support this Proposal, which I have had in my mind. In 1849 people came to Coloma, California, to dig “gold.” Since 1955, people come to Mountain View, California, to make “silicon” transistors. Now the State of California has made the city of Coloma a Sate Historical Park, but unfortunately it named the HP garage the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley," which was not quite correct. When Hewlett and Packard started development of the frequency meter, they used vacuum tubes rather than silicon transistors, which did not exist at the time. Therefore, it was not the start of “silicon” valley, if it was the start “high-technology” valley. Anyway we do not fight city hall and we need to be creative. Avoiding the “start” of Silicon Valley, I like to propose to call Shockley Labs “the nucleus” of Silicon Valley; of course, nucleus is the central inner particle of silicon atom.

Another suggestion; I would like to ask the Proposer to add one more location for placing the plaque, a famous bar in the Valley. There, engineers from neighboring such as National Semiconductors and Advance Micro Devices gathered at night, and openly discussed how to design silicon circuits over drinks. In the following morning, they reported to their offices and put the ideas into practices. It is unthinkable from the present world of confidentiality and intellectual property right. This could happen because all those engineers were either children or grand children of Shockley Labs, This free atmosphere at the dawn of industry accelerated the progress of silicon technology and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately I have forgotten the name of the bar. It could be Kirk’s restaurant in Palo Alto [Joel Shurkin, BROKEN GENIUS-The rise and fall of William Shockley, page 173, Mamillan 2006]. Grab any silicon engineer in the area back in 1960-1970, the engineer knows the name of the bar.

Hiro Kawamoto