Chapter 1
Birth of the valley: From audio oscillators to silicon chips
Chapter 2
Designing the personal computer: Out of the labs and into homes
Chapter 3
The internet gold rush: Browsers, bubbles, and mobile apps
Chapter 4
The intelligence age: From social feeds to neural networks
Ch 1 · Birth of the valley: From audio oscillators to silicon chips
steve Intel 4004 Microprocessor
They shrank a whole computer brain Into a single piece of silicon Just to run a desktop calculator
steve Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard used 538 dollars to build the Model 200A audio oscillator, attracting Walt Disney's sound engineers.
Quiz
Which movie studio became Hewlett-Packard's first major customer, buying eight audio oscillators to test a pioneering surround-sound system?
Quiz
How did Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard decide whose name would go first in their new company's name in 1939?
Quiz
Why did the Traitorous Eight choose to use silicon instead of germanium for their new transistors at Fairchild Semiconductor?
Quiz
What did Nobel laureate William Shockley famously call the eight scientists who resigned from his company in 1957 to start a rival firm?
Fun Fact
Light bulb hack: HP's first product, the Model 200A, used a simple night-light bulb in its circuit to control electrical feedback, keeping costs incredibly low.
Quiz
Who co-invented the silicon integrated circuit at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, later co-founding Intel?
Quiz
What process did Robert Noyce use to print metallic electrical connections directly onto a silicon wafer?
Glossary
silicon (noun)
A nonmetallic element widely used as a semiconductor in electronic components and microchips. In 1956, William Shockley founded a laboratory in Mountain View to manufacture transistors using this material.
A nonmetallic element widely used as a semiconductor in electronic components and microchips. In 1956, William Shockley founded a laboratory in Mountain View to manufacture transistors using this material.
Quiz
Released by Intel in 1971, what was the model number of the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor?
Quiz
Who co-founded Intel in 1968 alongside Robert Noyce, and is famous for predicting that chip power would double regularly?
steve The Santa Clara Valley transformed from a fruit orchard haven called Valley of Heart's Delight into Silicon Valley in 1971.
Quiz
What was the Santa Clara Valley's poetic agricultural nickname before it became known as Silicon Valley?