Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (Inside Technology) [Paperback]

Christophe Lécuyer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262622114 | ISBN-13: 978-0262622110 | Publication Date: August 24, 2007

In Making Silicon Valley, Christophe Lécuyer shows that the explosive growth of the personal computer industry in Silicon Valley was the culmination of decades of growth and innovation in the San Francisco-area electronics industry. Using the tools of science and technology studies, he explores the formation of Silicon Valley as an industrial district, from its beginnings as the home of a few radio enterprises that operated in the shadow of RCA and other East Coast firms through its establishment as a center of the electronics industry and a leading producer of power grid tubes, microwave tubes, and semiconductors. He traces the emergence of the innovative practices that made this growth possible by following key groups of engineers and entrepreneurs. He examines the forces outside Silicon Valley that shaped the industry -- in particular the effect of military patronage and procurement on the growth of the industry and on the development of technologies -- and considers the influence of Stanford University and other local institutions of higher learning.Lécuyer argues that Silicon Valley's emergence and its growth were made possible by the development of unique competencies in manufacturing, in product engineering, and in management. Entrepreneurs learned to integrate invention, design, manufacturing, and sales logistics, and they developed incentives to attract and retain a skilled and motivated workforce. The largest Silicon Valley firms -- including Eitel-McCullough (Eimac), Litton Industries, Varian Associates, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Intel -- dominated the American markets for advanced tubes and semiconductors and, because of their innovations in manufacturing, design, and management, served as models and incubators for other electronics ventures in the area.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lécuyer's book is the most scrupulous scholarly exploration so far of the cluster of innovative firms that has come to be called Silicon Valley. It is a book that should be read by anyone curious about the emergence of the high-tech electronics firms that have created this remarkable concentration of innovative talent." Nathan Rosenberg, Professor of Economics (Emeritus), Stanford University

" Making Silicon Valley is meatier than its contemporaries. Dense and replete with footnotes, it"s an expert book written for experts-readers who already know Robert Noyce from Gordon Moore. For them, it"s a detailed and nuanced discussion of how and why Silicon Valley emerged as a center of manufacturing, product engineering, and management." HBS Working Knowledge

"A deeply informed historian who writes with impressive clarity, David Nye persuades us in *Technology Matters* that we should ask the kind of life-shaping questions about technology that we customarily pose about politics and economics. He does not finally answer the timely questions that he explicates, but provokes us to search for our own answers."--Thomas P. Hughes, author of *Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture*

About the Author

Christophe Lecuyer is Principal Economic Analyst in the Office of the President of the University of California and the author of Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (MIT Press, 2005).

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262622114
• ISBN-13: 978-0262622110
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,094,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent historical contribution that is also a good read, November 30, 2005

By 

History of Technology Fan (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (Inside Technology) (Hardcover)

Lecuyer provides a compelling new perspective on the development of Silicon Valley, grounded in the evolution of a unique electronics manufacturing capability in the region. The centrality of manufacturing is traced through the growth both of an ecosystem of high-technology firms across four decades and of the novel business and management practices that were created. With this manufacturing perspective, Lecuyer shows how sucessive waves of high technology industries, from tubes to semiconductors to software, grew on the business, social, and technological innovations and capacities of the preceeding waves on the Peninsula.

Lecuyer's narrative is engaging, and populated by remarkable characters like the Varian brothers, Gordon Moore, Jean Hoerni, Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, and Apple Computer's "two Steves." The scholarship is deep and thorough.

Making Silicon Valley strikes me as an important contriubtion to the literature that would be of interest to many readers who are curious about the history of technology and business, well beyond the academic specialists for whom it will do doubt become standard fare.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read!, April 15, 2010

By 

Shane - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (Inside Technology) (Hardcover)

This books does a wonderful job mixing history with technical content. The author's ideas are well supported through evidence and good logic. Anyone involved in the technical sector of the San Francisco peninsula should read this book to understand the footsteps they are walking in.

5.0 out of 5 stars the pre-Apple days, November 1, 2011

By 

arpard fazakas - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (Inside Technology) (Paperback)

This is a solid, scholarly review of the history of Silicon Valley from its beginning making electronic components through the era of Intel and integrated solid-state circuits. It serves as an excellent foundation for understanding the subsequent development of Silicon Valley as the birthplace of the personal computer revolution. In chronological order the book discusses Eitel-McCullough, a major manufacturer of vacuum tubes; Litton Engineering, which made tools for the manufacturing of vacuum tubes, and its spinoff Litton Industries, which became the premiere manufacturer of tubes for radio and radar; Varian Associates, which specialized in klystrons, a very high frequency radio tube used for radar and atomic bomb fuses; Fairchild Semiconductor, Amelco, and Signetics, which manufactured semiconductor components; and Intel, Interstil, and National Semiconductor, makers of integrated semiconductor circuits. The author describes in detail the major forces which shaped the development of these companies: radio hobbyists; academia, especially Stanford University; competition with East Coast firms; and military procurement. He illuminates the origin of business practices such as collaborative approaches and stock options which became a hallmark of Silicon Valley. Particularly interesting is the Introduction in which the author discusses various social and economic interpretations of the Silicon Valley phenomenon; this section is an excellent starting point for those interested in learning more about these intriguing topics.

I found the level of this book to be just right: a solid scholarly tone but not overly technical or erudite. It is definitely not a popular history in the sense of revolving around individual personalities and amusing anecdotes, although it is of course impossible not to tell this story without referring to some remarkable personalities. I was particularly impressed by Charles Litton, who brought a remarkable blend of hands-on mechanical skills, physical intuition, engineering prowess, and business acumen to bear on the difficult problems of designing and manufacturing reliable, high-frequency, high-power radio tubes.

This book will be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of technology, electronics, and computers, as well the political, social, and economic forces which have shaped Silicon Valley, the computer industry, California, and the United States as a whole.