Ariel Romero
English 1A
Knapp
5/3/12
San Jose: How it became the Innovative Silicon Valley by
Technology
Technology is a lifestyle choice, we decide if we want to
consume ourselves with it or not, and has turned into an instrumental part of
our everyday life. What we now call the Silicon Valley once was a fertile
agricultural valley that held vast opportunities for its inhabitants. From both
World Wars to the Cold War, the use of technology has advanced immensely
causing economic headway and improvements. Technology is helping schools teach
beyond text based materials and to stretch the imagination, and the students
that are benefiting from these advancements will be the ones in the future to
be the influential creators. With all these current ground breaking innovative
ideas, the Santa Clara Valley has become a hub of inventions, new companies,
fast exchanges, and it is beyond any other area in technological advances.
These revolutionary changes paved the way to what it has become today.
Before the development of the Silicon/Santa Clara Valley,
San Jose was a little Spanish Pueblo that was to be transformed into an
American City. The pueblo complemented other colonization effort which was
governed by Mexico since 1822, and in 1846 it was established as an American
town. San Jose was the first state capitol of California and was
incorporated on March 27th, 1850 and re-incorporated March 27th, 1857. During
the 1860s, San Jose started the arrangement and assembly of a city. They
improved the architectures, amended the streets, and built hotels to bring
travelers, tourist, and money into the vast growing city. The city itself was
expanding so rapidly that street maps could not be updated fast enough. When
the Civil War ended more people started migrating west, which caused and
economic and population growth. With various flour mills and wheat being the
main product, San Jose was the wholesale vendor to the entire country. Once the
transcontinental railroad and the railroad to and from San Francisco and San
Jose were complete, they were able to send out their products to a larger
audience around the country. San Jose was also the fruit shipping capital in
California as orchards began popping up everywhere taking the place of grain
fields. As the population began to grow, business expanded, and canneries
opened. Because of the demand during World War I, canned fruit and fish was
lucrative in the Bay Area. The Valley’s agriculture had reached its peak, and
was important during the war. Santa Clara County benefited from the war as they
needed the fruit packing and growing industry and food supplies for the troops
in Europe. Wheat fields were prosperous because they could be grown without
irrigation. “Wheat ranching was a highly speculative enterprise. It also
because increasingly mechanized, and one of the most significant aspects of the
age of wheat” (Bean 227). With California’s climate, they were able to produce
fruits and other products year round, when they was no competition elsewhere.
There were 118 different farms in California, because of the climate and soil
and “The unmatched level of farm capitalization permitted the greatest use of
scientific techniques, and resulted in the nation’s highest level of farm
productivity” (407).
In 1881 when the Electric Light Tower was built it was the
largest combination of electrical light in the United States at the time, and
made San Jose a landmark worldwide. This was also the inspiration for the
Mercury News created by J.J. Owen. The First and Santa Clara streets were
very popular during this time, and there were many new banks, hotels, and
churches, including a City Hall in the Plaza. There were commercial buildings
constructed and the architects where Levi Goodrich and the Lenzen brothers.
With all the improvements on this engaging and captivating growing city, by
1890 the population in San Jose reached over 18,000 people. As automobiles
materialized at the turn of the century and changed the way people got around,
downtown was laid out with miles of pavement and as the business district was
established, San Jose had become an impressive city. In 1906 a massive
earthquake hit and caused the city to fall apart. Building had fallen apart and
fires helped destroy the established city. Soon the city got together and after
recovering from all the destruction, after only two years San Jose was rebuilt
and all signs of the destructive earthquake where gone. In the beginning of the
20th Century, right after the earthquake there was rapid growth and expansion
in San Jose. There was more residential areas arising and other districts were
annexed to the city. The city improved even more as there was a measure to
improve the streets, there was new sidewalks, intersection lights, and
streetlights, to polish the downtown look. (Muller)
The invention Federal Telegraph was made from a graduate of
Stanford University, named Cyril Elwell whom was working on a sparked-based
radio telegraph system. “Elwell was unable to get the system to work with
either a spark transmitter or an alternator, so he wired Dr. Vladimir Poulsen,
the inventor of the arc transmitter, in Copenhagen about the possibility of
acquiring its U.S. patent rights. Poulsen agreed and Elwell soon traveled to
Denmark to inspect the system and negotiate a deal” (Kenney 19). Once he
returned to Palo Alto C.D. Marx the head of the Engineering Department at
Stanford invested in a company that would give telegraph and telephone services
wirelessly to the coast using Poulsen’s wireless technology. The company called
Poulsen Wireless Telephone and Telegraph and was later renamed the Federal
Telegraph Company (FTC) which had a lot of involvement from administrators at
Stanford. Elwell wanted to expand the FTC and went to Washington D.C. to
introduce it to the navy. They were successful and the navy ordered ten
thirty-watt arc transmitters to use on the ships. When World War I was started
the demand for the arc transmitter was very high. The FTC also did work for the
Lafayette Radio Station in France and installed a pair of one-thousand-kilowatt
transmitters. The job was not finished even after World War I ended, and France
paid to have it complete. The development of vacuum tube started becoming more
important. The arc transmitters where interfering with smaller wavelengths and could
not be installed past a certain kilowatt. The vacuum tubes emitted high power
and “short-waves”. These tubes opened a new market in the electronics industry
and the first patented one was invented by Lee de Forest:
By 1912, de Forest had developed vacuum tubes that
could be applied to all three stages of wireless radio communications: signal
generation (the oscillator), signal reception (the audion), and signal
amplification (the amplifier)… In 1931, Robert Milikan, then director of the
Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics and chairman of the Executive Council of
the California Institute of Technology, gave a nationally broadcast speech,
introduced by President Hoover, in which he noted the importance of the de
Forest three-electrode amplifier. (Kenney 25)
This was very important because the invention of the
electron tube led to many new inventions and advancements in science and
society. The electron tube helped the development to television (which was an
important part of the World Wars to broadcast current events and to bring the
nation closer together), radio broadcast, the whole modern motion picture
industry, picture reproduction – all from one tube. The electron tube and the
telegraph were made in Palo Alto at the FTC labs.
Dr. Frederick Terman a professor at Stanford encouraged the
students not to go to the East to join established companies but to start their
own electronics companies. Two of these students started developing and audio
oscillator in their garage and those two smart students where William Hewlett
and David Packard. Terman, whom is often called the father of Silicon Valley
helped put together the Stanford Research Park which is in Palo Alto and
companies like Hewlett-Packard and General Electric where some of the first to
be located there.
As World War I materialized the people of San Jose
started, “participating in a series of Liberty Loan Drives, parades, and other
activities designed to promote and support the war effort” (Muller 44). “The
Endless Frontier” was a policy after World War II from Roosevelt and Vannevar
Bush (1945) affirmed that “Basic research is essentially noncommercial in
nature, it will not receive the attention it requires if left to industry,” and
approached the government and encouraged them to go along with this research.
Research and Development is the advance in the sub-optimal technologies.
Although this is expensive in most countries it is an important part in
economic growth and is considered a priority to continue with Research and
Development in advancement in new technologies. Before World War II, Stanford
University was compared to MIT which had government funding when they did their
research. Stanford later was a more instrumental university when it came to
government research and funding and continues to develop this position. This
was because of the Engineering Department and the fact that the need for this
field became more meaningful as industries and government research activities
were more fundamental in science. The University wanted the professors of the
leading research in engineering to be familiar with the outside world and
economics. The soldiers during the post-war period helped teach others how to
use the new technologies for the research. The school was a leader in research
and received hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts
which helped the advancement in new technologies.
New products had been introduced and many start-up
companies made Silicon Valley different. As entrepreneurs with the
implementations of hydroelectric industry begun, small companies produced
resistors and condensers and other new instruments. Not only was there more job
opportunities for engineering graduates but there was also economic growth
post-war with the many demands of devices needed for the military. Companies
such as Hewlett-Packard would make new products or improve the older ones to
keep up with military demand. Also during the war Terman worked in directing
the Radio Research Lab. Post war Terman was made dean of engineering. With
Terman doing so much for Stanford and the Silicon Valley, education has also
changed. Stanford is considered the Harvard of the West. The research and
developments of this school has expanded what we know and helps other school,
such as grade schools to high schools. There are schools that use programs to
help the children learn faster and have a better response. More people are
because audio and visual learners with the help of technology and products such
as the Apple products. There are interactive games and programs to help people
of various ages learn and the fact that they know how to use these
technological products shows how society itself has advanced and adapted. Web
site creators such as Mark Zuckerberg have revolutionized the internet with sites
like Facebook. Many others like him have come from Palo Alto and the Silicon
Valley and have made computer chips and other important contributions from
companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, General Electric, and many more.
From a small pueblo town with vast agricultural
opportunities and being the leaders in the fruit packing industry, to
government funded research projects to develop new technologies the post war
periods. These technologies have helped shape not only the Santa Clara Silicon
Valley, but the everyday lives of people in society whom benefit from the
evolving plethora of ground breaking new products influenced from electron
tubes and arc transmitters. Around the world people are trying to emulate the
valleys success. From urbanization and industrialization and the success of
technology the rapid growth of Silicon Valley is intimately entwined to the San
Francisco’s Bay Areas success.
Works
Cited
Bean, Walton. California;
an Interpretive History. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968. Print.
Walton Bean examines the history that shaped
California, such as sociological behaviors, problems, themes of special
importance, racism, etc. Special conditions traced back from Mexican land
grants to the railroad system, and the rise of corporate agribusiness. The rise
from the oppression and labor, the decisions on economic or environmental needs
and the decisions necessary to form a home for many. This is helpful for my
research for smaller details with agriculture and Stanford University.
Harayama, Yuko. Private
Incentive and the Role of Government in Technology Advancement. Rep. 1 May
2012. Web.
<http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/TimLenoir/SiliconValley99/Harayama/SVResearch.pdf>.
Kenney, Martin. Understanding
Silicon Valley: The Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region. Stanford, CA:
Stanford UP, 2000. Print.
From contributors of multiple disciplines-- history,
geography, sociology, etc. -- Silicon Valley and its development through
entrepreneurship and innovations is examined. Edited by Martin Kenney, a
Professor of the Department of Human and Community Development at University of
California, Davis. This book is important to the end the history of the
research paper. After the history and the growth of California from farming and
cultural innovations, to what is now the Santa Clara and Silicon Valley
Muller, Kathleen. San
Jose: City with a past. San Jose, CA: San Jose Historical Museum
Association, 1988. Print.
A detailed history of how San Jose was once a
little mission town to the massive city it was today. The book brushes on
topics such as the time during the WWI and expansion of the city itself and the
development of the layout were used.
