Researcch paper final

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.