– the early 20th century, tech development, new management practices, where innovation happens today …
Speaker: Paul Wesling, IEEE Life Fellow, Tandem Computer/HP (retired)
Meeting Date: Friday, April 15, 2016
Time: 7:30 PM
Cost: none
Location: VA Med Center auditorium, 42nd Ave & Clement Street, San Francisco
RSVP: not required
Website, for more details: www.sfarc.org/sfarcmet.htm

Summary: Why did Silicon Valley come into being? The story goes back to local Hams trying to break RCA’s tube patents, the sinking of the Titanic, Naval ship communications requirements, World War I, Fred Terman and Stanford University, local invention of high-power tubes (gammatron, klystron), WW II and radar, William Shockley’s mother living in Palo Alto, and the SF Bay Area infrastructure and management practices that developed – these factors pretty much determined that the semiconductor and IC industries would be located in the Santa Clara Valley.
Paul Wesling, KM6LH, an IEEE/CPMT Society Distinguished Lecturer, will give an exciting and colorful history of device technology development and innovation that began in San Francisco and Palo Alto in 1910, and ended up in the Santa Clara Valley during and following World War II. You’ll meet some of the colorful characters — Lee DeForest, “Doc” Herrold, Bill Eitel, Charles Litton, Fred Terman, David Packard, Bill Hewlett, Sigurd Varian and others — who came to define worldwide electronics industries through their inventions, process development, and approach to management.
Please feel free to come to this non-technical talk (great for spouses, teens). Circulate this information to others with an interest in Ham radio and Silicon Valley history!