In 1957 a group of eight scientists signed a dollar bill in Santa Clara which would become known as Silicon Valley’s Declaration of Independence. This was their declaration:
“We are going to start a company according to our own ideals and our own beliefs, and nothing is going to stop us.”
The coining of the phrase ‘Silicon Valley’ was more than ten years in the future when they started their company.
Technology that would usher in a new history was to be birthed here.
The Santa Clara Valley in Northern California as it was known back then, was not an obvious spot for technological innovative companies at that time.
But in the 1950’s Stanford University started to lease land to technology companies at bargain prices.
This led to Americans moving to northern California in search of new opportunities. They came in large numbers like they did during the gold rush.
In 1947 Dr. Shockley invented the transistor. A key development in electrical engineering. It was the basis for the transistor radio which was the most popular electronic device in America in the 50’s.
Dr. Shockley then moved to California in the 50’s and when Robert Noyce, a young scientist first talked to him on the phone he said, “it was like talking to God.”
William Shockley in 1956 recruited a group of eight young PhD graduates with the goal to develop and produce new semiconductor devices. While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his managing of the group created harsh working conditions. He chose a strategy for circuit design that failed and created an intolerable working atmosphere.
The traitorous eight as they later became known, decided they had to leave Shockley’s laboratory and in September 1957 started their own company with the help of Sherman Fairchild. Fairchild was the largest shareholder of IBM at the time.
The newly founded company soon grew into a leader of the semiconductor industry.
In 1960 it became an incubator of Silicon Valley.
Starting your own company back in the 50’s was considered very risky and the consequences of failure were catastrophic. Generally when you worked for a certain company the idea was you would stay with the same company until you retired. Loyalty was one of the values Americans held to highly at the time.
Silicon Valley became the hub of startups. A startup company or startup is a company, a partnership or temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
On October 4th 1957, the Russians launched the first satellite into space giving a technological blow to the United States.
The space race was on and the Fairchild Semiconductor, the company formed by the traitorous eight was to invent transistors that could withhold the rigours of space, due to a contract from the air force Noyce helped win.
“Brilliant people with brilliant ideas exist all the time. It’s just a question of being a brilliant person with a brilliant idea in the right place at the right time where people want what you’ve come up with.”
Santa Clara county has more Phd’s in high technology than any place in the world.
This all came about from the new business culture created by Robert Noyce and his associates at Fairchild Semiconductor, which encouraged camaraderie and openness over hierarchy. It was all about what can you bring to the table.
The atmosphere of the early Fairchild was a combination of a college dormitory frat house with a sort of country house locker room. Basically a bunch of men in their twenties starting to make real money, competing with each other on who had the bigger swagger.
It was too much talent stuffed into one place.
The wagon wheel was the pub of choice and marriages had 150% divorce rates.
By the mid 60’s Fairchild had broken off into numerous other companies which were looking to profit from this invention of transistors that constituted to a microchip. (An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small plate (“chip”) of semiconductor material, normally silicon.)
This birth of startup companies gave way to what we know now as Silicon Valley.
“Success breeds discontent.”
When a failure to reinvest its profits on its employees and internal strife began to mount Fairchild Semiconductor began to disintegrate.
Giving everything up and starting from scratch was the reality people like Noyce lived for.
Fairchild executives started their own firm again in July of 1968 called ‘INTEL’-Integrated Electronics.
This firm invented the microprocessor, a brain child of Robert Noyce. His firm drove technology at break neck pace. This cutting edge technology business model began with Intel.
By the time Intel brought to light the microprocessor the Santa Clara Valley bore little resemblance to the waste farm land it was 15 years earlier when Shockley set up shop. The number of high technology jobs had increased ten fold in the area. And the population of San Jose, the valley’s largest city had more than doubled to nearly half a million.
After 1971 the Santa Clara valley would increasingly be known as ‘Silicon Valley’.
The name soon to be synonymous with risk, technological innovation, and the new brand of the American Dream was now coined.
This valley is perpetually young. It’s always made up of the next generation’s brand of entrepreneurs, having their ‘kill your dad moment’ they start their own companies. They are not real big on history around here, and they don’t look back very much. Innovation is everything. How are you different! How are you better!
The rest of it is gut busting hard working engineering, but the idea to do something different is the magic of Silicon Valley, then and now.
Am I on the verge of doing something different?
Did God bring me here to start my own company/firm/ministry so I can have my ‘kill your dad moment’?
These are all questions I have half-answered. Nothing happens by chance, and God is always looking to bless those who have faith in Him.
Creating an app for young people who are searching for spiritual mentors they can interact and share stories with would be a great first step to reaching out to them. I love ministering to young people of all ages and especially the ones with special needs as I have experience in learning about and teaching this population. By giving my time to such a venture I feel would rekindle the passion inside of me greatly.
How can you help?
How are you different?
How are you better?
Pray for this app to be invented-‘God-in-Me’. And we can help make a difference to our young generation.
Community of Faith; trying to understand what it means to have a relationship with God. 