Why Did Silicon Valley Develop in the San Francisco Bay Area Instead of the East Coast?

Dr. Don Estreich
Lecturer Engineering Science Department, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA

Cerent Engineering Science Complex, Salazar Hall 2009A
4:00 PM

Abstract – Silicon Valley is one of the World’s great success stories in the evolution of technology. The roots and origin of Silicon Valley date back to over 100 years ago. It can be argued that it started with the amateur radio activities, within the San Francisco Bay Area, resulting in the development of world-leading vacuum tube technology that would prove crucial to the war effort in World War II. Stanford University, lead by the work of Dr. Fred Terman, were essential in building the environment necessary for the growth of Silicon Valley. Shockley Semiconductor lead to the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor which resulted in the development of the planar process – it enabled the integrated circuit microelectronic revolution. That in turn drove the rise of the personal computer and eventually to the use of the Internet as we know it today. This talk reviews the history of Silicon Valley and explores why it blossomed in the San Francisco Bay Area and not elsewhere. The key elements in the success of Silicon Valley and why it happened in the Bay Area are discussed.

Dr. Don Estreich is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Engineering Science Department at Sonoma State University. He received the BSEE degree from U.C. Berkeley and the Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1980. During the 1970s he worked in Silicon Valley at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto. He worked for 30 years at Hewlett-Packard’s Technology Center (later Agilent Technologies) on compound semiconductor integrated circuits and test and measurement instrumentation. He has been with Sonoma State University since 2010.