Another reason is that California does not enforce non-compete agreements. This allows talented employees to jump easily between companies or leave to start their own in a really efficient way.
It's not just Stanford, although Stanford definitely plays a massive role in Silicon Valley's development and epicenter of the tech world. UC Berkeley, San Jose State, Santa Clara University, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, San Francisco State and more are all either in the Bay Area or within a stone's throw (such as UC Davis). The overlap of tech and biotech is largely due to the same factors, with UCSF planting the seeds of talent for the plethora of biotech firms in South San Francisco. Venture capital, combined with education makes for an incredible hotbed of local talent, along with the funding necessary from venture capitalist firms on Sand Hill Road and throughout the region. It's no surprise that the newest "hot topic" that is A.I. is centered in Silicon Valley.
You mean publicly funded research most notably VLSI research projects generously funded by DARPA. HP, Digital, SUN and many others were founded by researchers who participated in these programs. Somehow this got completely overlooked in the story.
This can be seen in cambridge, MA, where Kendall Square is a startup and tech hub because of it's proximity to MIT/Harvard, and other Boston area schools
I need to point out that many farms that used to dot the area in what's now known as Silicon Valley were Japanese American farms, which, through the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, were taken away from Japanese Americans. I think it's a part of the history worth remembering.
Left out what might be the most important factor in the Valley's success. Stanford U had a different approach to intellectual property transfer. Students and professors could invent something on campus and then use the invention to open a business while maintaining ownership of that invention. Most colleges insist that the property is theirs and the inventor doesn't enjoy the fruits of their labor.
IP ownership is an important detail that wasn't specifically mentioned, but the video essentially covered this at a higher overview level. The university to industry cycle was a key component of the video.
Fun fact: the soil in the Bay Area is considered so fertile that it is said it can be used to grow almost anything. As great as Silicon Valley has been in creating new technologies, it's kind of sad how some of the most fertile soil in the state, if not the entire country is now unusable due the all the urban sprawl. Makes me wonder what things would have been like if Silicon Valley had developed in a much denser fashion to preserve the farmland, instead of just spreading out across the entire Bay Area
Even the biggest US success stories are usually, in hindsight or when looking at the bigger picture, colossal failures. Or, in the best cases, just colonialist.
Silicon Valley probably took like 0.2% of agriculture land in CA. CA is still produces 30% of produce consumed in US. Here is the water usage Residential: ~6% Commercial: ~6% Agricultural: 88%
Yup. A lot of the places that once held farmland such as San Jose in the area had roads named after the places they destroyed along the way. Blossom Hill Road used to be an orchard. Almaden used to be a mercury/quicksilver mine with cinnabar being the top export from the area. The city of Oakland used to be a land that had plenty of oaks in the area.
As a bay area native, it makes me happy to hear this. The amount of educated individuals here is unmatched. Universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCSF, and SJSU among many others provide many opportunities for personal development close to home.
As a CS graduate from Stanford, the entrepreneurial spirit is stronger than ever. Many consider it more prestigious to drop out and found a start-up than it is to join Google or Microsoft. There are courses specifically designed to spur startups, even partnering with big tech companies to provide advisors for school projects. It is truly a place like no other - partying at the frat where Instagram was made, staying in the dorm where Snapchat was made. It can be a toxic environment of always trying to find the next big thing, but I am endlessly grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be taught by Turing Award winners and people that have changed the course of society.
The same thing happened with Disney. Disneyland was built it the middle of orange groves. Disney World was built on a swamp. But once tourists came, more theme parks and businesses popped up nearby, thus perpetuating the cycle.
A lot of the tenants at Stanford Industrial Park decided to come there because New York`s really didn't have office space available during that period.
there are way more asian phds now and most prefer the west coast. plus, almost all silicon related stuff are built in asia, so west coast is the obvious choice.
I was always under the impression that Shockley chose Palo Alto because he wanted to be close to his ailing mother who lived nearby. And that had it not been for this fact, Shockley semiconductors would have been established in the Los Angeles area thus changing history as we know it. So I think a large part of this story really comes down to the random connections of family (although the moves made by Stanford certainly facilitated the growth of silicon valley)
I think it's one of these knock-on effects: ie, people with lots of resources and intelligence tend to be more "lucky", as they have the intelligence and knowledge to perceive potential advantages, as well as resources to take advantage of those opportunities. Similarly, Stanford was "lucky" because of its resources and plans, and thus had more opportunities for folks like Shockley to set up shop there.
I currently live in San Jose as a Bay Area native and this was an excellent video, amazing to see how Stanford helped build up this area, couldn’t believe that this was once mainly farm land
Somehow overlooked that Berkeley was found in 1849...36-years before Stanford. It was producing Engineers for the region long before Stanford. True the cash of Leeland Stanford was a major factor, but let's not forget the countless Engineers that were already living and working in the region (unlike all but 2 or 3 regions of the USA at that time in history).
Silicon Valley has only one flaw: rush hour traffic. By no means a unique problem, but I wish trains and apartment complexes were more common and AFFORDABLE here.
So many things I would like to see.. Transit needs to become a no brainer convenience for folks of all incomes opposed to current default of car or Uber for those that can afford (which many can, thus traffic) Lots of mixed use housing next to Caltrain. Lot more frequency Good extended hours service specially weekends so transit based option to have a nightlife, attend shows and concerts in SF is easy. Good and frequent last mile transit connection options so folks who are less mobile or travelling with significant loads can avoid Uber. Fast and frequent transit connection from SFO to caltrain.
Apartment complex construction is exploding over there. They are definitely being built, rapidly. Granted, they’re not being built as tall as they could be… but taller than before.
I was 4, 1959, when we moved to San Jose, Dad worked for IBM and was all over the Valley working on those big computers. He worked at SLAC to take care of the IBM computers, as one of many accounts. He graduated from CAL.
Greetings from Mountain View. You briefly mentioned another key player, The University of California, by showing a headline about Cal and The Farm but didn't mention how closely the universities and their students collaborated. Sure, we are rivals in many ways but also best buds in so many other ways.
This oft repeated history is inaccurate. Physics in California was put on the map in the 1930s by UC Berkeley's Nobel winning technology, the cyclotron used to split the atom. UC Berkeley developed (1963) the country's first lab where you could make integrated circuits (first made at Berkeley by Don Pederson), years before MIT and Stanford. The critical computer prototyping of microcircuits using SPICE was also developed at UC Berkeley. Within 10 years, every circuit design engineer in the world was using SPICE. As a public university, Berkeley made SPICE available to everyone (opensource). RISC, the 3-dimensional transistor, and RISC-V are all Berkeley inventions. Among many others in the field, Gordon Moore is a Berkeley alum.
But the transistors (co-invented by Shockley) came from Bell Labs, where the better silicon variant was also prototyped, and developed by Texas Instruments. The first silicon engineering came from the East Coast with William Shockley juste before his Nobel Prize in 1956. Integrated Circuits were co-invented by several laboratories : Noyce's 1959 patent was filed just before Kilby's 1958 version at T.I. Stanford was a key player but didn't do everything on its own in its little valley.
Really well done!!! I’m stuck by the story in light of the recent news that West Virginia University in Morgantown is slashing programs/faculty due to budget issues due to years of declining state support. There was a time when it was well funded, trying to serve as a hub of biotech development in the region in much the same way as the story depicts. Investment in education, development of the population level of skill and choice, particularly as other industries change is vital, yet in the case of WV, the state didn’t follow through, and football can only get you so far!
This report falls short of how SV developed. You cannot talk about SV WITHOUT talking about San Jose State. You also neglected to mention the UC system development, and California's commitment to keep college education affordable.
Great Video! Always wondered why Silicon Valley came into existence and preeminence, given the historical lead of New Jersey (Bell Labs) and Boston (MIT/Harvard).
@@angelelelelalalalalelae Stanford has the richest history and deepest culture of all Bay Area institutions. I'd say the majority of folks in Silicon Valley would know, especially if they are paying such a high price there
@@scottanos9981 most people in the bay area right now are probably the first in their families to be living here, many just come here because of work they dont have any real reason to be looking for the origins and history of the area
I gotta point out the fact there's no "prune" trees! The plum is dried out to become a prune LoL! Enjoyed the explanation of the expansion of Stanford and new technology, even though I am in that "pe-on" part of the country, where these companies, like Western Electric thrived for decades. Kinda makes me wonder with this relationship if it has hindered more creativity, or at least destined the area for eventual empirical downfall? Regardless, interesting and informative thank you for sharing!
About "prune" trees. Yes/no. Although we commonly call all such fruit plums, the prune is a different type of plum that is better for drying. Sunset defines it this way: "Prunes are European plum varieties with a high sugar content that makes it possible to sun-dry the fruit without it fermenting." To the extent that many of the Santa Clara Valley's "plums" were dried to make "prunes," it's OK to refer them as prune trees. That said, I would also have called them plums and I would have mentioned the apricots and cherries this valley was also well known for. When we moved to Mountain View in 1964, the Valley was still a key supplier of cut flowers before that industry moved to Colombia.
@@Zeyev Good to know especially from someone that has experienced the growth and change in the area. Similar to wine and table grapes, similar fruit but very different attributes.
@@Zeyev thanks for the info, I just did a search on cut flowers exports, I had no idea that Colombia is so much, it's the source of 50% of all global cut flower exports, even more than 50% for the US market. The Netherlands supplies the EU with cut flowers more per capita, but they still import plenty of Colombian flowers.
I agree somewhat on that but Silicon Valley should not have so many suburban areas at the point where it spreads to large parts of land with nature. If Silicon Valley had denser buildings for housing and commercial and weren't constricted to a height limit I think it would have led to much better public transit, commercial use, housing prices and preservation of wildlife.
@@anthonypaul5654 Yeah, at the density of Paris - a city so beloved by Americans that around 2.5 million a year visit, despite the distance and language barriers - the whole population of the 9-county Bay Area could fit onto the currently-developed land from San Francisco through Sunnyvale or so, and the rest could remain farmland or a nature preserve.
This video made me have an epiphany: As a corporation, create your own human resources, if any surplus at all, allow the world to reap the benefits; true charity.
Not really complete. Stanford students and professors were part of it, but more fundamental science was being done at Berkeley. Cal was where Oppenheimer developed a lot of the physics that went into the a-bomb, for example. There was a cyclotron at Berkeley before the Stanford linear accelerator. There was a semiconductor lab at Cal before at Stanford. NASA Ames, for example, even today, is coadministered by Cal. While Stanford was taking the lead on partnering with industry, Berkeley took the lead on working with government. And coming out of WW2, through the space race, partnership with government was just as important.
The video touched upon it briefly in the beginning, but the impact of World War II cannot be understated for why Silicon Valley is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. California, with its engineering operations in the Bay and a naval military base in San Diego, were the headquarters for the Pacific theater against Japan. The post-war suburbinization of California was kickstarted by all the military veterans who remained in the state, and this rush in home-building led to people all across the country move to California. So the military-industrial-university complex centered at Stanford and UC Berkeley were positioned to take advantage of these historic trends, fueled by more people and more scientific talent.
I would say the military aspect was a factor in the tech development, but tech was the driving force behind Silicon Valley as it is today, if it wasn't for HP and Intel etc, none of this industry would be here
SV is also home to the oldest institution of higher learning in the western US (Santa Clara, 1851) and the oldest public institution of higher learning in the western US (San Jose St, 1857). The area has been a magnet for higher education since statehood. Also, the weather is nearly perfect.
This video was really interesting. Could you possibly do a side video related to this, about the affect of silicon valley on the overall cost of living.. I live in Oregon & it's been really weird how since i was born in 1989 to now, the cost of living is so drastically changed. I want scientific advancements more than anyone but i really REALLY wish that our country could figure out how to improve the quality of living here in our modern society..
Stanford continues to be an incubator for entrepreneurs. U.C. Berkeley (Cal), although in the East Bay, is part of this cycle, is even more so today. Oppenheimer, Lawrence, etc. attracted some of the best minds in the country to the Bay Area. Cal's influence should have been included (It was in one image of a newspaper headline).
I remember as a kid ridding the Observation Deck ride at Great America amusement park and it was a few buildings out in the distance but it was mostly crop fields. Even in the mid 90’s there were still fields here and there even as tech companies moved in. I was working as an IBEW apprentice and i turned out just after the tech bust in early 00’s. Lots of empty buildings after that.
Nice video, interesting to learn the role of Stanford in Tech (big role in music too with the FM patent). Some have argued that California making illegal no-compete clauses in employment contracts was a big contributor in making the Silicon Valley what it is today. This why it did not work as well around Harvard/MIT.
I would do a video similar to this but about Las Vegas. How did a Mormon fort get built in the middle of one of the most inhospitable deserts on the planet? And how did it become the gambling and entertainment capital of the world? I was born and raised in Las Vegas; I can help you guys out. It’s a very interesting story, especially with the rise of climate change and the housing crisis.
And this is why the state of California has intervened with required higher density rules so that sufficient housing can be built, with much screaming and gnashing of teeth by the ritzier suburbs.
Basically, the origins of Silicon Valley started from an idea in a business university, which just happened to have its area expanded into an industrial realm conquered by tech companies.
was it ruined actually the semiconductor industry and it's productivity, or was it ruined by the greed of self-important MBA's that swooped in once the Regan admin started the Fed printing money and dropping interest rates?
@@ianglenn2821The Business Side was wrecking it from the beginning. Once anything becomes "about the money" instead of "About the [thing] it started with" it is on it's way out.
Great video, I would love to hear some history of venture capital in the region as who has historically been funded and who gets funding now does not match up with the demographics of the US.
@@yxyk-frWatch the part from 3:05 to 3:45 again. Whenever it's done, both parts grow. It's a symbiotic thing. Like the video mentioned/showed at minute 3.
Hard to believe this area was once farmland. The only time I can believe that is in the winter when it rains. The hills are a beautiful green and the climate mild. During the summer the hills are brown and dead 😝
Okay and what is the message here? We should have more universities involved in business? This video just seems odd when you think about student debt and the disparity between rich and poor when it comes to getting an education in the first place.
Stanford has a large endowment and allows lower/middle-income students to attend either tuition-free or significantly discounted from what wealthier students pay to attend Stanford.
@@FreewayBrent Oh thats good. I hope it becomes common university practice. But I still think the video is way too positive when considering the whole education system overall.
@@Munchausenification California actually does it better than most other states when it comes to offering affordable higher education. Stanford is a private university (I'm sure you knew that), but the California State community college system is by far the cheapest to attend in the entire country and has guaranteed transfer agreements to the University of California and California State University systems. $46 per semester unit, and if you're lower-income, you qualify for a tuition waiver which reduces your tuition fees to $0. New Mexico has a pretty affordable community college system as well but is still about 27% more expensive than California. In 45 states, it costs at least $3,200+ in tuition to attend community college full time per year; it's only $1,428 in California. Full time students at the California State University system will spend over $6,000 in tuition per year, making it one of the most affordable university systems in the US.
This is pure perfection. I recently enjoyed a similar book, and it was pure perfection. "The Hidden Empire: Inside the Private Worlds of Elite CEOs" by Adam Skylight
Nice video, although you didn't mention the Pharma-biotech influence that also is part of the landscape of "Silicon Valley". I worked in the Pharma industry for over 10 years at several different companies located on the Stanford Research Park land in Palo Alto.
I just finished listening to Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto. It be neat if you can cover the eugenics of Palo Alto. Such as Leland Stanford's farms and horse breeding technique and red lining that went on there.
I heard about that on the Upstream podcast! I was fascinated by the way Leland Stanford brutally and wastefully went through horses, very like the way Elon Musk goes through rockets. Frederick Terman's father was Lewis Terman, a eugenicist who "popularized the IQ test in America" according to Wikipedia. I went to David Starr Jordan Middle School in 7th grade, which was named after a prominent eugenicist and colleague of Leland Stanford. I was disturbed to learn that the school reopened under the same name after I was gone, and the name wasn't changed until 2018.
This is all well and good--no doubt Stanford has been a driver of industrial growth there. It's a bit reductionist, though, no? Hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government had been flowing into the valley since the end of the Second World War. Defense money built Silicon Valley, both directly and indirectly (through universities). Also the engineer-entrepreneur model predated Stanford by a long shot. Edison, for example.
I think folks overlook that until the early 80s or so, all University of California schools were free to in-state students, which likely helped populate the companies with additional talent that was educated, wanted to stay in California, and could take any exciting new job.
I don't live in The USA nor do I plan on studying there however I find it fascinating how Universities there are so entrenched in cultural diversity, like Brown for example, people go to them largely for the culture of the university
I thought I knew a fair amount of Silicon Valley history, but I have never heard of Terman. Most histories say, "mumble mumble, Stanford University" and then kind of hand-wave the whole issue away.
Just proves back how less than a generation ago how intertwined our government was with the upper and wealthy classes; simple letters by a singular person creating entire shifts in ideology for a community due to the impact of money and greed.
I'm enchanted by this content. I had the pleasure of reading something similar, and I was completely enchanted. "The Hidden Empire: Inside the Private Worlds of Elite CEOs" by Adam Skylight
It’s all thanks to the military, the military help make Silicon Valley happen but the Bay Area abandoned the military. And look at how much the bay has fallen without the military. Places like Vallejo and Oakland were doing so much better when the military was here. Also why is the history about how the military created the computer and that research going on at moffett Field in Mountain View is what brought in a lot of STEM talents to the area.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Another reason is that California does not enforce non-compete agreements. This allows talented employees to jump easily between companies or leave to start their own in a really efficient way.
Yep nvidia and amd literally stare each other down from across the highway 😂
@@giofilms9099and intel is across AMD
It shows how a university can change its surroundings drastically in all the fields of science and business.
It's not just Stanford, although Stanford definitely plays a massive role in Silicon Valley's development and epicenter of the tech world. UC Berkeley, San Jose State, Santa Clara University, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, San Francisco State and more are all either in the Bay Area or within a stone's throw (such as UC Davis). The overlap of tech and biotech is largely due to the same factors, with UCSF planting the seeds of talent for the plethora of biotech firms in South San Francisco. Venture capital, combined with education makes for an incredible hotbed of local talent, along with the funding necessary from venture capitalist firms on Sand Hill Road and throughout the region. It's no surprise that the newest "hot topic" that is A.I. is centered in Silicon Valley.
You also have UC Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Oppenheimer even got his start there.
You mean publicly funded research most notably VLSI research projects generously funded by DARPA. HP, Digital, SUN and many others were founded by researchers who participated in these programs. Somehow this got completely overlooked in the story.
Very Sim City / Civilization to give +1 to Science in its surrounding areas
This can be seen in cambridge, MA, where Kendall Square is a startup and tech hub because of it's proximity to MIT/Harvard, and other Boston area schools
I need to point out that many farms that used to dot the area in what's now known as Silicon Valley were Japanese American farms, which, through the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, were taken away from Japanese Americans. I think it's a part of the history worth remembering.
Thanks for mentioning this. It probably should have been mentioned in the video.
typical…
Thank you for mentioning
Agreed
this needs to be pinned
Left out what might be the most important factor in the Valley's success. Stanford U had a different approach to intellectual property transfer. Students and professors could invent something on campus and then use the invention to open a business while maintaining ownership of that invention. Most colleges insist that the property is theirs and the inventor doesn't enjoy the fruits of their labor.
IP ownership is an important detail that wasn't specifically mentioned, but the video essentially covered this at a higher overview level. The university to industry cycle was a key component of the video.
It's more than a detail, it is the factor that made the Stanford/S Valley unique. everywhere else the Univ kept the IP @@DemPilafian
@@paullawler7532 You're confusing _"detail"_ with _"unimportant"._ Learn English before you lecture anyone.
Fun fact: the soil in the Bay Area is considered so fertile that it is said it can be used to grow almost anything. As great as Silicon Valley has been in creating new technologies, it's kind of sad how some of the most fertile soil in the state, if not the entire country is now unusable due the all the urban sprawl. Makes me wonder what things would have been like if Silicon Valley had developed in a much denser fashion to preserve the farmland, instead of just spreading out across the entire Bay Area
Even the biggest US success stories are usually, in hindsight or when looking at the bigger picture, colossal failures. Or, in the best cases, just colonialist.
Big dense cities have their own problems... Trust me, I lived at Seoul for 25 years.
Silicon Valley probably took like 0.2% of agriculture land in CA.
CA is still produces 30% of produce consumed in US.
Here is the water usage
Residential: ~6%
Commercial: ~6%
Agricultural: 88%
Yup. A lot of the places that once held farmland such as San Jose in the area had roads named after the places they destroyed along the way. Blossom Hill Road used to be an orchard. Almaden used to be a mercury/quicksilver mine with cinnabar being the top export from the area. The city of Oakland used to be a land that had plenty of oaks in the area.
As a bay area native, it makes me happy to hear this. The amount of educated individuals here is unmatched. Universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCSF, and SJSU among many others provide many opportunities for personal development close to home.
yes there's a reason the Bay Area is one of the top areas for research and development
You forgot Santa Clara University, the first and oldest university in California
I'm about to say the same thing :) Go Broncos!@@ronak4489
@@ronak4489Ain’t nobody go there brah
@@ssadisfyingg😂
As a CS graduate from Stanford, the entrepreneurial spirit is stronger than ever. Many consider it more prestigious to drop out and found a start-up than it is to join Google or Microsoft. There are courses specifically designed to spur startups, even partnering with big tech companies to provide advisors for school projects.
It is truly a place like no other - partying at the frat where Instagram was made, staying in the dorm where Snapchat was made. It can be a toxic environment of always trying to find the next big thing, but I am endlessly grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be taught by Turing Award winners and people that have changed the course of society.
Sure did change it…for the worse. They didn’t find the cure to cancer, they coded a social media app 😂😂
@@elpencil2920and what have you contributed?
CS grad from stanford?? Venmo me please lol
@@Powerhouse08 You'll get an answer once you remember my order comes with a drink.
@@custos3249 oh, you guys know each other?
The same thing happened with Disney. Disneyland was built it the middle of orange groves. Disney World was built on a swamp. But once tourists came, more theme parks and businesses popped up nearby, thus perpetuating the cycle.
the saying is true, if you build it (the industry), they will come, same with LA and Disneyland
A lot of the tenants at Stanford Industrial Park decided to come there because New York`s really didn't have office space available during that period.
They were coming for sunny weather and fleeing the closed culture of East Coast tech (hierarchy, noncompetes)
It’s interesting that everything is building up in New York now
I think they found the space micron signed a deal for CNY recently
there are way more asian phds now and most prefer the west coast.
plus, almost all silicon related stuff are built in asia, so west coast is the obvious choice.
I was always under the impression that Shockley chose Palo Alto because he wanted to be close to his ailing mother who lived nearby. And that had it not been for this fact, Shockley semiconductors would have been established in the Los Angeles area thus changing history as we know it. So I think a large part of this story really comes down to the random connections of family (although the moves made by Stanford certainly facilitated the growth of silicon valley)
I thought it was only William Shockley responsible for Silicon Valley because he’s the co-inventor of the semiconductor electronics.
Yeah, but his mother graduated from Stanford. And Shockley learned physics from a Stanford professor when he was a kid.
I think it's one of these knock-on effects: ie, people with lots of resources and intelligence tend to be more "lucky", as they have the intelligence and knowledge to perceive potential advantages, as well as resources to take advantage of those opportunities.
Similarly, Stanford was "lucky" because of its resources and plans, and thus had more opportunities for folks like Shockley to set up shop there.
Hollywood changed everything for LA, it used to be in Niles, Fremont CA, there was nothing in LA back then
Shockley did move there robe close to his mom...
I currently live in San Jose as a Bay Area native and this was an excellent video, amazing to see how Stanford helped build up this area, couldn’t believe that this was once mainly farm land
I love the Vox post credit scenes
Somehow overlooked that Berkeley was found in 1849...36-years before Stanford. It was producing Engineers for the region long before Stanford. True the cash of Leeland Stanford was a major factor, but let's not forget the countless Engineers that were already living and working in the region (unlike all but 2 or 3 regions of the USA at that time in history).
Oppenheimer illustrated this perfectly
Not to mention Santa Clara University was founded in 1851 creating engineers since its creation. I think that Berkeley was founded 1868 though.
Silicon Valley has only one flaw: rush hour traffic.
By no means a unique problem, but I wish trains and apartment complexes were more common and AFFORDABLE here.
We need mixed-use towers adjacent to every CalTrain station.
Go back to Ohio. Your part of the problem by wanting to be here. We are full
@@DemPilafian Maybe they should stop blowing their horns... I refuse to live next to Caltrain stations for that reason
So many things I would like to see.. Transit needs to become a no brainer convenience for folks of all incomes opposed to current default of car or Uber for those that can afford (which many can, thus traffic)
Lots of mixed use housing next to Caltrain.
Lot more frequency
Good extended hours service specially weekends so transit based option to have a nightlife, attend shows and concerts in SF is easy.
Good and frequent last mile transit connection options so folks who are less mobile or travelling with significant loads can avoid Uber.
Fast and frequent transit connection from SFO to caltrain.
Apartment complex construction is exploding over there. They are definitely being built, rapidly. Granted, they’re not being built as tall as they could be… but taller than before.
I was 4, 1959, when we moved to San Jose, Dad worked for IBM and was all over the Valley working on those big computers. He worked at SLAC to take care of the IBM computers, as one of many accounts. He graduated from CAL.
Would you like to share more about this era and region and the machines that were developed ?
Greetings from Mountain View. You briefly mentioned another key player, The University of California, by showing a headline about Cal and The Farm but didn't mention how closely the universities and their students collaborated. Sure, we are rivals in many ways but also best buds in so many other ways.
Nice👌
This oft repeated history is inaccurate. Physics in California was put on the map in the 1930s by UC Berkeley's Nobel winning technology, the cyclotron used to split the atom. UC Berkeley developed (1963) the country's first lab where you could make integrated circuits (first made at Berkeley by Don Pederson), years before MIT and Stanford. The critical computer prototyping of microcircuits using SPICE was also developed at UC Berkeley. Within 10 years, every circuit design engineer in the world was using SPICE. As a public university, Berkeley made SPICE available to everyone (opensource). RISC, the 3-dimensional transistor, and RISC-V are all Berkeley inventions. Among many others in the field, Gordon Moore is a Berkeley alum.
But the transistors (co-invented by Shockley) came from Bell Labs, where the better silicon variant was also prototyped, and developed by Texas Instruments. The first silicon engineering came from the East Coast with William Shockley juste before his Nobel Prize in 1956. Integrated Circuits were co-invented by several laboratories : Noyce's 1959 patent was filed just before Kilby's 1958 version at T.I.
Stanford was a key player but didn't do everything on its own in its little valley.
Really well done!!! I’m stuck by the story in light of the recent news that West Virginia University in Morgantown is slashing programs/faculty due to budget issues due to years of declining state support. There was a time when it was well funded, trying to serve as a hub of biotech development in the region in much the same way as the story depicts. Investment in education, development of the population level of skill and choice, particularly as other industries change is vital, yet in the case of WV, the state didn’t follow through, and football can only get you so far!
Thank you so much for this! was literally doing research about this for the past weeks
This report falls short of how SV developed. You cannot talk about SV WITHOUT talking about San Jose State. You also neglected to mention the UC system development, and California's commitment to keep college education affordable.
I feel like this is forgetting that U.C. Berkeley is also an hour away from Silicon Valley
One of the fun things is finding small groves that are still leftover all over the peninsula and the valley with free fruit and vegetables.
Great Video! Always wondered why Silicon Valley came into existence and preeminence, given the historical lead of New Jersey (Bell Labs) and Boston (MIT/Harvard).
Interesting. Lived in the Bay Area for 50 years. Never knew the history of this
How did you not know this for 50 years? It's common knowledge
@@scottanos9981Never much cared
@@scottanos9981 this is not common knowledge at all, like sure a few residents might know about it but i'd say like 80% just dont know and dont care 💀
@@angelelelelalalalalelae Stanford has the richest history and deepest culture of all Bay Area institutions. I'd say the majority of folks in Silicon Valley would know, especially if they are paying such a high price there
@@scottanos9981 most people in the bay area right now are probably the first in their families to be living here, many just come here because of work they dont have any real reason to be looking for the origins and history of the area
I gotta point out the fact there's no "prune" trees! The plum is dried out to become a prune LoL!
Enjoyed the explanation of the expansion of Stanford and new technology, even though I am in that "pe-on" part of the country, where these companies, like Western Electric thrived for decades. Kinda makes me wonder with this relationship if it has hindered more creativity, or at least destined the area for eventual empirical downfall?
Regardless, interesting and informative thank you for sharing!
About "prune" trees. Yes/no. Although we commonly call all such fruit plums, the prune is a different type of plum that is better for drying. Sunset defines it this way: "Prunes are European plum varieties with a high sugar content that makes it possible to sun-dry the fruit without it fermenting." To the extent that many of the Santa Clara Valley's "plums" were dried to make "prunes," it's OK to refer them as prune trees. That said, I would also have called them plums and I would have mentioned the apricots and cherries this valley was also well known for. When we moved to Mountain View in 1964, the Valley was still a key supplier of cut flowers before that industry moved to Colombia.
@@Zeyev Good to know especially from someone that has experienced the growth and change in the area. Similar to wine and table grapes, similar fruit but very different attributes.
@@ZeyevThanks for the explanation. I was just wondering if there was some technical reason not to refer to them as plums.
@@Zeyev thanks for the info, I just did a search on cut flowers exports, I had no idea that Colombia is so much, it's the source of 50% of all global cut flower exports, even more than 50% for the US market. The Netherlands supplies the EU with cut flowers more per capita, but they still import plenty of Colombian flowers.
And it seems that Termen's insistence on "low buildings" to keep "neighborhood character" led to the housing crisis there as well.
SCV is one of my favorite places in the country. It’s truly a perfect blend of commercialization and nature preservation.
I agree somewhat on that but Silicon Valley should not have so many suburban areas at the point where it spreads to large parts of land with nature. If Silicon Valley had denser buildings for housing and commercial and weren't constricted to a height limit I think it would have led to much better public transit, commercial use, housing prices and preservation of wildlife.
@@anthonypaul5654Seriously. The absolute least environmentally friendly way to build a city. Suburban lawns are not nature.
@@anthonypaul5654 Yeah, at the density of Paris - a city so beloved by Americans that around 2.5 million a year visit, despite the distance and language barriers - the whole population of the 9-county Bay Area could fit onto the currently-developed land from San Francisco through Sunnyvale or so, and the rest could remain farmland or a nature preserve.
Lol clearly you are not from here.
@@anthonypaul5654 I'll take the Bay Area over Chicago / NY density any day of the week, thanks very much
Mention UC Berkeley. It helped also!
This video made me have an epiphany: As a corporation, create your own human resources, if any surplus at all, allow the world to reap the benefits; true charity.
Not really complete. Stanford students and professors were part of it, but more fundamental science was being done at Berkeley. Cal was where Oppenheimer developed a lot of the physics that went into the a-bomb, for example. There was a cyclotron at Berkeley before the Stanford linear accelerator. There was a semiconductor lab at Cal before at Stanford. NASA Ames, for example, even today, is coadministered by Cal. While Stanford was taking the lead on partnering with industry, Berkeley took the lead on working with government. And coming out of WW2, through the space race, partnership with government was just as important.
So educational and interesting
You glossed over how the CA Master Plan made SJSU and Berkeley more affordable leading to an added influx of engineering talent like Jobs and Woz.
The video touched upon it briefly in the beginning, but the impact of World War II cannot be understated for why Silicon Valley is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. California, with its engineering operations in the Bay and a naval military base in San Diego, were the headquarters for the Pacific theater against Japan. The post-war suburbinization of California was kickstarted by all the military veterans who remained in the state, and this rush in home-building led to people all across the country move to California. So the military-industrial-university complex centered at Stanford and UC Berkeley were positioned to take advantage of these historic trends, fueled by more people and more scientific talent.
I would say the military aspect was a factor in the tech development, but tech was the driving force behind Silicon Valley as it is today, if it wasn't for HP and Intel etc, none of this industry would be here
SV is also home to the oldest institution of higher learning in the western US (Santa Clara, 1851) and the oldest public institution of higher learning in the western US (San Jose St, 1857). The area has been a magnet for higher education since statehood. Also, the weather is nearly perfect.
If it wasn’t so expensive I would have loved to go to Santa Clara University, I’m at Cal State East Bay now
Intelectuals even more than the masses love perfect weather (and they can afford it)
I'm assuming the 49ers had something to do with that?
I went to SJSU and we had students from all over the country come just to learn there
Great video! I love any story that Phil Edwards touchs haha
What was up with the California pizza kitchen?
The photo in the intro is stunning. Looking forward to watching the rest of the video after I'm done at work.
This video was really interesting. Could you possibly do a side video related to this, about the affect of silicon valley on the overall cost of living.. I live in Oregon & it's been really weird how since i was born in 1989 to now, the cost of living is so drastically changed. I want scientific advancements more than anyone but i really REALLY wish that our country could figure out how to improve the quality of living here in our modern society..
I haven't see the video yet, however, I give the like in advance, because of Phil.
Stanford continues to be an incubator for entrepreneurs. U.C. Berkeley (Cal), although in the East Bay, is part of this cycle, is even more so today. Oppenheimer, Lawrence, etc. attracted some of the best minds in the country to the Bay Area. Cal's influence should have been included (It was in one image of a newspaper headline).
Its amazing how investing in education and science can help development and growth
it's amazing how money and capital can tilt the scale, yep
Informative and VERY interesting. I will be recommending this video in my economics classes.
I remember as a kid ridding the Observation Deck ride at Great America amusement park and it was a few buildings out in the distance but it was mostly crop fields. Even in the mid 90’s there were still fields here and there even as tech companies moved in. I was working as an IBEW apprentice and i turned out just after the tech bust in early 00’s. Lots of empty buildings after that.
I lived, studied and worked in Silicon Valley for fifteen years. It was Nerd Heaven.
Nice video, interesting to learn the role of Stanford in Tech (big role in music too with the FM patent). Some have argued that California making illegal no-compete clauses in employment contracts was a big contributor in making the Silicon Valley what it is today. This why it did not work as well around Harvard/MIT.
Happy to live here and study in the silicon valley. 😊
Well researched video all around.
I would do a video similar to this but about Las Vegas. How did a Mormon fort get built in the middle of one of the most inhospitable deserts on the planet? And how did it become the gambling and entertainment capital of the world? I was born and raised in Las Vegas; I can help you guys out. It’s a very interesting story, especially with the rise of climate change and the housing crisis.
Cisco was also started by two (then) students of Stanford.
Nice work!
I'm watching this video and now I can see why zoning is so restrictive in a good portion of the Bay Area (no, it's not a good thing)
And this is why the state of California has intervened with required higher density rules so that sufficient housing can be built, with much screaming and gnashing of teeth by the ritzier suburbs.
Basically, the origins of Silicon Valley started from an idea in a business university, which just happened to have its area expanded into an industrial realm conquered by tech companies.
I love this channel ❤
This was an excellent video, I love the Vox post..
there is no such thing as a prune tree. There are plum trees, but you have to dry the fruit off of them to get a prune.
Thank you for talking about my state!
I’m 71 and was born and raised in the Santa Clara Valley. The semiconductor industry totally effed up this beautiful valley.
was it ruined actually the semiconductor industry and it's productivity, or was it ruined by the greed of self-important MBA's that swooped in once the Regan admin started the Fed printing money and dropping interest rates?
@@ianglenn2821The Business Side was wrecking it from the beginning.
Once anything becomes "about the money" instead of "About the [thing] it started with" it is on it's way out.
@@Prophes0r The pollution from the early semiconductors fabs is still there though. They used to dispose of extremely nasty chemicals "carelessly"...
@@yxyk-fr I don't disagree...but I don't understand how it relates to what I said.
@@Prophes0r Pollution is one of the many ways the region was "f"ed up. But you know more than me about it as I didn't even visit the area 🙂
Great visionaries!
Awesome video, thank you 👍
Great video, I would love to hear some history of venture capital in the region as who has historically been funded and who gets funding now does not match up with the demographics of the US.
3:06 Universities helping companies/industries helping universities. ❤ Yep.
c'm'on. Do industries *really* help universities ? besides a token donation...
@@yxyk-frWatch the part from 3:05 to 3:45 again.
Whenever it's done, both parts grow. It's a symbiotic thing. Like the video mentioned/showed at minute 3.
Hey VOX: How about some coverage of the various, rarely mentioned, Superfund sites left behind by those Silicon Valley Semiconductor pioneers?
Hard to believe this area was once farmland. The only time I can believe that is in the winter when it rains. The hills are a beautiful green and the climate mild. During the summer the hills are brown and dead 😝
Reminds me of George Constanza- "should i have not done that" 😁
Okay and what is the message here? We should have more universities involved in business? This video just seems odd when you think about student debt and the disparity between rich and poor when it comes to getting an education in the first place.
Stanford has a large endowment and allows lower/middle-income students to attend either tuition-free or significantly discounted from what wealthier students pay to attend Stanford.
@@FreewayBrent Oh thats good. I hope it becomes common university practice. But I still think the video is way too positive when considering the whole education system overall.
The message is clearly about how development depends on institutional factors, such as education and land resources, that feed into a benign cycle.
@@Munchausenification California actually does it better than most other states when it comes to offering affordable higher education. Stanford is a private university (I'm sure you knew that), but the California State community college system is by far the cheapest to attend in the entire country and has guaranteed transfer agreements to the University of California and California State University systems. $46 per semester unit, and if you're lower-income, you qualify for a tuition waiver which reduces your tuition fees to $0. New Mexico has a pretty affordable community college system as well but is still about 27% more expensive than California. In 45 states, it costs at least $3,200+ in tuition to attend community college full time per year; it's only $1,428 in California. Full time students at the California State University system will spend over $6,000 in tuition per year, making it one of the most affordable university systems in the US.
@@FreewayBrent thank you
This is pure perfection. I recently enjoyed a similar book, and it was pure perfection. "The Hidden Empire: Inside the Private Worlds of Elite CEOs" by Adam Skylight
No mention of UC Berkeley??
Nice video, although you didn't mention the Pharma-biotech influence that also is part of the landscape of "Silicon Valley". I worked in the Pharma industry for over 10 years at several different companies located on the Stanford Research Park land in Palo Alto.
I really appreciate that video thanks.
Great job Phil!
I kind of knew about the HP Intel connection, but didn't know that Stanford was involved, very interesting
As always, another good video by Vox
I just finished listening to Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto. It be neat if you can cover the eugenics of Palo Alto. Such as Leland Stanford's farms and horse breeding technique and red lining that went on there.
I heard about that on the Upstream podcast! I was fascinated by the way Leland Stanford brutally and wastefully went through horses, very like the way Elon Musk goes through rockets.
Frederick Terman's father was Lewis Terman, a eugenicist who "popularized the IQ test in America" according to Wikipedia.
I went to David Starr Jordan Middle School in 7th grade, which was named after a prominent eugenicist and colleague of Leland Stanford. I was disturbed to learn that the school reopened under the same name after I was gone, and the name wasn't changed until 2018.
Shockley was a eugenicist too...
@@yxyk-fr They all were. Stanford, Shockley, Tiernan. Standford Uni was a breeding ground for Eugenics. Pun intended.
@@jacaliber good one !
This video was for sure influenced by Harris, but with no citation! This is, like, the liberal sanitized version of the story.
Lol i'm from here and I don't know anyone that loves it here with the prices and traffic. But then again i don't work in tech....
It’s a very beautiful place
it was the cheapest place to make a start up in IT, at the time
Silicon Valley sure seems mysterious. It’s basically home to possibly one of the richest out there,
lol thanks for that silly comment that is very clearly a bot
This is all well and good--no doubt Stanford has been a driver of industrial growth there. It's a bit reductionist, though, no? Hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government had been flowing into the valley since the end of the Second World War. Defense money built Silicon Valley, both directly and indirectly (through universities). Also the engineer-entrepreneur model predated Stanford by a long shot. Edison, for example.
This is also birthplace of Biotechnology - Genentech . Just visit South Francisco. Yes, Prescence of Stanford, Berkley, UCSF is multiplier
Missed the mention of IBM’s huge campus at Cottle, South San Jose in 1950s which was as important as the HP garage.
I think folks overlook that until the early 80s or so, all University of California schools were free to in-state students, which likely helped populate the companies with additional talent that was educated, wanted to stay in California, and could take any exciting new job.
as a berkeley grad i despise this video
I don't live in The USA nor do I plan on studying there however I find it fascinating how Universities there are so entrenched in cultural diversity, like Brown for example, people go to them largely for the culture of the university
How to make something big. Step 1 - become a landlord...
It’s interesting to see that so many important things were defined in the US just in the last days of Roosevelt administration…
I genuinely used to think it was called Silicon Valley because everyone got plastic surgery there 😂
I thought it was only William Shockley responsible for Silicon Valley because he’s the co-inventor of the semiconductor electronics.
sometimes, stars align for the better ?
Please make an episode about parasitic fungus
I thought I knew a fair amount of Silicon Valley history, but I have never heard of Terman. Most histories say, "mumble mumble, Stanford University" and then kind of hand-wave the whole issue away.
8:06 Columbo the detective said this waaaay before Apple did it... If you know your history....
Morale of the story: invest in your community
There's a former testing site for Xerox on Bautista Canyon Road in Hemet CA. Wonder if there's any information or if was just a dumping ground?
Aren’t prunes just dried plums? Wouldn’t those be plum trees?
Forgot to mention the weather. It is a BIG reason why people stay.
Only here because Phil sent me, not because of Vox, but Phil
California has LOTS of problems. But can't deny its relentless ambition for innovation.
Just proves back how less than a generation ago how intertwined our government was with the upper and wealthy classes; simple letters by a singular person creating entire shifts in ideology for a community due to the impact of money and greed.
Man this video is so slow. Even on 1.25 speed. Kinda stunning
I'm enchanted by this content. I had the pleasure of reading something similar, and I was completely enchanted. "The Hidden Empire: Inside the Private Worlds of Elite CEOs" by Adam Skylight
It’s all thanks to the military, the military help make Silicon Valley happen but the Bay Area abandoned the military. And look at how much the bay has fallen without the military. Places like Vallejo and Oakland were doing so much better when the military was here. Also why is the history about how the military created the computer and that research going on at moffett Field in Mountain View is what brought in a lot of STEM talents to the area.
Will you do videos on Silicon alley and Silicon prairie?