Birthplace of Silicon Valley in Shambles 157
CowTipperGore writes "Founded by William Shockley in the mid-50s, Shockley Semiconductor Lab is generally credited with starting the Silicon Valley boom. When he was unable to lure his former Bell Labs coworkers to join him, he filled his ranks with the best and brightest engineering school grads, including Gordon Moore and others who later went on to form Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.
The building at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California, is the original site of the company but, unlike the HP Garage, this building has received little protection or preservation. It recently housed a fruit stand, where visitors could find a small display about Shockley above baskets of fruit. The fruit stand is now closed, leaving the future of the building in the air."
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Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the building itself, I always have a bit of a struggle in deciding how to approach potential landmarks. The problem is that every time we reserve land as a "landmark", we reduce the ability of that particular area to advance. That land could be used for a larger, more modern building supporting new and exciting development. And yet, what would we lose to history if it was torn down?
In the end, I think there must be a balance struck. Unless the site is incredibly valuable to history, it should be thoroughly documented (including the transfer of any and all objects/materials related to the site to a historical society) and then allowed to be replaced or torn down.
Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:4, Interesting)
I like to think I'm immune to such things, but on some of those trips I find myself similarly taken in. I didn't really need to see the Magna Carta or the Rosetta Stone or the Codex Hammurabi; I can read the texts more clearly and get better views via photographs. But on the other hand it's the FREAKING MAGNA CARTA and it's right there in front of me.
I'm afraid that fruit stand isn't going to mean much to me, but I can see it meaning a lot to somebody else.
Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty slim.
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Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's the di
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For me, it's the fallen glory of a united world with a single, near-universal language. For others it might be the purity of the dawn's light, or some shit like that. It's all fine.
So, "spiritualize" on, my friend.
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I agree with the GP that a balance has to be kept. In this case, if it's so far gone as to be a fruit stand, it's probably best torn down and replaced with a new research lab.
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But if that's the rationale used to preserve locations, then nothing can ever be torn down. Pretty much every building on the planet is going to have some meaning for someone, somewhere (or might in the future). The balance is to find something that has significant meaning for a large population of people. And if the population in question is large enough, they can just buy the land themselves and pre
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But the Codex Hammurabi.... I can't read it, so I wouldn't know its sig
Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I grew up in that general area and, trust me, there are a hundred thousand banal light industrial buildings just like the one mentioned in TFA, many of which had equally important industrial advances made in them. That hardly merits spending a single dollar to protect any of them. If the building has some architectural significance, it might be worth saving but if it's just another tilt-up/concrete block box, I say go ahead and raze the thing if there's a good reason.
Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:5, Informative)
Just a few blocks away is another notable site:
http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=21522 [ca.gov]
NO. 1000 SITE OF INVENTION OF THE FIRST COMMERCIALLY PRACTICABLE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT - At this site in 1959, Dr. Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation invented the first integrated circuit that could be produced commercially. Based on 'planar' technology, an earlier Fairchild breakthrough, Noyce's invention consisted of a complete electronic circuit inside a small silicon chip. His innovation helped revolutionize 'Silicon Valley's' semicondutor electronics industry, and brought profound change to the lives of people everywhere.
Location: 844 E Charleston Rd, Palo Alto
It's also in a pretty unremarkable building.
Just a few blocks from the HP garage is another interesting site:
NO. 836 PIONEER ELECTRONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY - This is the original site of the laboratory and factory of Federal Telegraph Company, founded in 1909 by Cyril F. Elwell. Here, Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the three-element radio vacuum tube, devised the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in 1911-13. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age.
Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto
That building is already long gone. Unless there's something remarkable about the building or you have a sympathetic property owner, I say let progress march on.
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Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto
You mean the same Lee DeForest who couldn't explain how his amplifier worked? It's certainly historical as a monument to big money and the ability to obtain priority of a patent fr
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But it doesn't end there. Pretty much every house where some unknown composer of the 18ish century was born, died or took a leak is a landmark now. Can you imagine downtown being pretty much a museum?
And, let's be honest here, in 100
Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring... (Score:5, Informative)
Come visit Philadelphia sometime. It's nice.
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In the end, I think there must be a balance struck. Unless the site is incredibly valuable to history, it should be thoroughly documented (including the transfer of any and all objects/materials related to the site to a historical society) and then allowed to be replaced or torn down.
While I found the issue interesting, I actually agree. The building itself seems to offer little historical value and has no apparent architectural interest.
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With that said, we really should save his building. He i
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Hmmmm. After thinking back to then, the talk and even listening to him after the whole thing calmed down (just about a dozen of us), I had the sense that he was not really a KKK type. Somebody else said that he suffers from paranoia and I think that would probably better describe it. Such as he had no issue with mixing asian and whites but he thought that asians would be better off not doing so. I really think that he was just a paranoid bastard who allowed his t
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In this case, it'd be no loss. The building being a landmark wouldn't be preventing progress, by any stretch of the ima
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There's been a BK just past the sears, closer to the corner of El Camino and San Antonio. Also really low traffic. Even for a BK.
It was a really uninspired fruit stand too :-) (Score:2)
The folks who did the fruit business in Shockley's old place must not have done much market research - they didn't have the quality to compete with the fruit stand for people who like that ki
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One biographer quoted a Shockley acquaintance (no friends, alas) as saying he had "Negative Charisma." Interesting interview here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/20 06/1678241.htm [abc.net.au]
wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
Should we preserve the garage where the first shoelace was invented? Should we go back and make a museum out of every little place a startup was born?
It's a fruit-stand. let it go. Stop living in the past.
Re:wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lol (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. While I'm all for preserving historic architecture this place is a fricking dump...It was a dump even when it was new, just the kind of place that you would expect to house a startup that was run by a crackpot who only hired kids straight outta college (because his former colleagues refused to work with him).
Tells you something about the place that during the 50s a bunch of kids right out of school were so fed up that they quit in a group after one year. Think how likely that would be today, and imagine what it would have been like back then, when you expected to stay with a company much longer.
Historical preservationism run amuck (Score:2)
Case in point, MIT built a bunch of throw-away housing (read: barracks) and research buildings during World War II. The buildings were scheduled to be razed, and then that was halted because someone decided that they were a historical landmark -- because that's where RADAR was invented.
The buildings were still an eyesore when I was a student back in 1988-92, though there were ongoing p
Similar buildings at Berkeley (Score:2)
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Talk to Steve Jobs about that...
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
The collosseum was abandoned (or rather, ceased to be used) because they switched to the Christian faith and those games were seen as heathen. Do you REALLY think they would not have torn it down if they had any chance to? We have a rich history of destroying 'heathen' places of worship, you think some huge reminder of that time like the collosseum would have survived if they saw any chance to actually destroy it?
Re:wtf? Coliseum recycled too (Score:2)
the coliseum like many other buildings that were no longer in use (abandoned temples etc) provided building materials for new churches and other buldings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Coliseum [wikipedia.org]
there's a pretty good book about michaelangelo and the sistine chapel which gives a good account of the terri
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Actually, the collosseum was in use for hundreds of years after the games. [wikipedia.org]
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Comparing this building to the colosseum in Rome is quite a bit absurd. The colosseum has a much greater cultural significance than this building. Not only that but it has architectural significance as well. I hardly see how this compares to an office building, even if it once housed the business that would encourage the growth of a "tech sector" in that area of the country.
Comparing the building to modern sports arenas is perhaps more on the level. Its no longer out of the ordinary to have super struc
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Sure there are countries with many amazing artifacts, however, most of these were not preserved by their respective governments... they were preserved by the church, private collectors, business owners, or passed on through generations.
The government actually stepping in to preserve
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Bah. The only reason that anything like the Colosseum survived was because (a) it was extremely well-built and (b) it would have cost too much to tear it down and replace it with something else. If either one of these hadn't been true, then it would have been destroyed in one of the periodic conflagarations that Rome seemed to enjoy, or it would have been razed by an emperor who would then have gone on to buil
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Seems fitting (Score:4, Insightful)
Day workers (Score:1, Funny)
Otherwise, the situation may not be as dire as presented.
Re: Day workers in Silicon Valley (Score:2)
Wow it's tiny. (Score:1)
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Since it is a "tech building" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
No (Score:2)
I grew up in a house that was 200+ years old. It had been in my family for generations. Because of circumstances, we had to move out and the house was purchased by the city and de
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If these preservationists had their way, no new buildings could ever be built because we'd have to preserve all the crappy old shanty houses, warehouses, Wal-Mart buildings,
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I will say that there is a historic district in the city where I live that has some absolutely classic homes, including a home built (in part) by Frank Lloyd Wright. The house is a masterpiece and should be saved. But a house two doors down is also protected even though it is a very or
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What the hell was wrong with people in the 70s, anyway? The buildings were ugly, the cars were ugly, even the people (esp. men) were ugly with their crappy haircuts and ugly clothes. It's not a modern vs. historical thing, either; there's all kinds of great aes
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I would dare say, however, that the WTC was the best of the style that came from that period of time. There was much else that was even worse.
I lived through the 1970s (as a child) and when looking back on older photographs of myself, I still wonder w
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The Empire State building and Chrysler building are far more attractive
Building looks ok; just really unexciting (Score:2)
"The Fruit Stand Is Now Closed." (Score:2)
Most. Surreal. Slashdot. Summary. Ever.
Nooooooo! (Score:5, Funny)
The fruit there was never more than OK :-) (Score:2)
Um (Score:3, Informative)
It's true that Shockley was a co-inventory of the transistor, but that happened on the East coast, at Bell Labs. (Shockley was also a racist fucktard of the first magnitude, a genuinely-unlikable sort who managed to alienate pretty much every professional colleague he ever had.)
If Shockley's lab in California gets replaced by a parking garage or whatever, I'm sure it's no great loss. HP is, and was, where it all got started.
Re:Um (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that "... it was Shockley who first brought silicon to the Santa Clara Valley..." [wikipedia], he is indeed what started Silicon Valley. However, if he had never started his lab, with the number of high-tech companies already in the area, and the likely switch from germanium to silicon by the industry, Silicon Valley would probably still have earned its name.
Sure HP was the first startup to open in the area as the result of Terman's efforts to encourage local college graduates to start companies locally instead of moving to LA. However they were not into silicon until after Shockley came. I would argue that the valley should be renamed to honor Terman, as it was his ideas that led to the valley becoming the high-tech center that it is.
I Liked That Fruit Stand (Score:4, Informative)
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That's it! I propose the Wisconsin 100-point scale for measuring the oddness of foreign fruit: the percentage of people from Wisconsin who have seen the fruit three or fewer times.
Due to the expense of polling, we will only ever know Wisconsin numbers for very few fruits, and those will be known only to very low accuracy. Many of them will really only be wild guesses. For example, did you know that the kumquat is a 62 on the Wisconsin scale?
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One idea (Score:2)
Preserve history and its dreams please (Score:2)
But I must admit I am kind of a Luddite myself. I love technology and history at the same time.
One history moment that stuns me is standing on the site of the first space launch down at KSC. To think humans had the audacity to to go into space on that tiny vehicle? I think that someday some kid not yet born might stand on that site and be inspired to weave st
The place is a dump (Score:4, Informative)
The place was a posterchild of those California "This location contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer." From what I remember when they were developing the IC with all the various chemicals that entails they would just dump the extra chemicals in back(there is a parking lot there now).
When I was there the owners of the company had a half-hearted attempt to get the property designated as a landmark, as others have suggested. But I assume that it all fell through given the current circumstances.
Never Noticed... (Score:2)
Smart but messed up... (Score:2, Interesting)
Do some reading - he was a brilliant but utterly offensive man who had one idea in his head (Shockley diode) at Shockley Semi which he stubbornly kept to, basically forcing himself out of the business and his engineers to start their own companies.
So his role in the creation of Silicon Valley was twofold - he planted the original seed, then force
move it to shoreline (Score:2)
shoreline park (mtn view) already has one relocated historic site [r-house.org].
so it IS possible to 'relo' things like that. and in fact, its only a few miles away!
put the sign post where the original building is (fine) and then relo the remains and restore it over in shoreline park, somewhere.
that's a neat area and has/had many famous companies there, including google (who now has the old SGI building), Sun used to be there, SGI had a huge campus there, once (sigh) and I think adobe was there, as well.
maybe
Nostalgia (Score:4, Funny)
Evil Lair (Score:3, Funny)
I say we save his Lab, and "restore" it so that it takes the shape of his head. Put a deathray in there, and have tours. I'd go see it.
It is really the birthplace of (Score:2)
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_3/chpt_7/3.ht
and never delievered on it. Some samples were made, but it never made it to production.
Meh, not everything needs to be preserved... (Score:2)
Easy Answer... (Score:2)
Give Shockley a sledgehammer, point him at the building, and tell him the building was saying bad things about him.
In an hour or two, this entire argument would be pointless.
"Raaaawwwwrrr... Shockley CRUSH!"
This just in... (Score:2)
Dumb.
He may have been a Nobel prize winner... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/shockley/sho
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley [wikipedia.org]
The PBS article is a hit piece. In the controversial area of race/IQ/dysgenics, you will notice that there are no quotes from Shockley. Instead there is negative value judgment after value judgment without any references or specifics.
Even with the wikipedia references, I notice that there are very few quotes to be found amidst many value judgments about his "(ob)noxious racial views". Surely if they were indeed that horrible they c
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Hey, Stanford is all about the Marketplace of Ideas and Free Expression
Lots of brilliant people tend to go insane past middle age. I'm not sure why they can't say, "This guy made some major contributions to Human Knowledge, changed the course
from dust thou wert created (Score:2)
this is entirely appropriate, that 391 decay into irrelevance
just as every organization,
every business dream in silicon valley
decays eventually into irrelevance.
Tandem Gould SEL Xidex System Industries
Atari National Semi Zilog amdahl 3DO
Netscape Monolithic Memories HAL
Wyle Silicon Graphics Diamond Borland
only Computer Literacy and Fry's were created immortal --
[ and the owners of Computer Literacy traded their heritage
for a mess of Barnes and Noble po
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Not a garden of Eden... (Score:2)
Transistor (Score:2)
Feature request (Score:2)
Re:Apple Joke (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, not really. The first three-terminal transistor was probably a crude FET built in the 1920s by Lilienfeld [patent-invent.com]. And the first practical diodes would have been the cat's-whisker detectors used around the turn of the century in early radio work.
Shockley's post-Bell Labs work was notable, but none of it was anywhere near as critical to the Valley's development as the founding of HP or even Ap
huh? (Score:2)
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Ditmer's Gourmet Meats and Wurst Hause on San Antonio
is one of the best things about living in Silicon Valley.
_Real_ bratwurst, schinken, weisswurst,
jaegerwurst, kassler ripchen, mettwurst.
Gold medal award plaques line the walls.
Real Bayerische sourdough rye in kilo loaves.
German potato salad. Emmentaler.
Say hi to Herr Bubert for me.
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Not to mention some damn fine (real) vanilla extract! Yummmmm....