This dissertation traces the growth of the Silicon Valley, the electronics manufacturing complex on the San Francisco Peninsula, from humble beginnings in the 1930s to its rise to prominence by the late 1960s. It focusses especially on the electronics component sector, the Valley's very core during this period. Most accounts of Silicon Valley have viewed the region as an outgrowth of Stanford University's research and teaching programs. Instead, this dissertation argues that it should be understood as the creation of three technological and entrepreneurial groups: radio amateurs, microwave engineers, and silicon technologists. These groups were either indigenous to the area or moved to the Peninsula in the postwar period. Each group brought with it new technologies as well as a distinct culture, style of work, and political and professional ideologies. These technological and entrepreneurial communities built three mutually supportive industries: the manufacture of power grid tubes, microwave tubes, and silicon components.;The Peninsula's electronics component manufacturing complex was also shaped by large scale forces in industry, government, and the international arena. Key among these was military patronage and procurement during World War II and the Cold War. Because of their social and technological innovations, firms on the Peninsula, unlike their East Coast counterparts, were able to capitalize on the growing military demand for very reliable and high performance electronic components in the 1940s and 1950s. When the Department of Defense cut back its component expenditures and radically altered its procurement policies in the early 1960s, local corporations quickly adapted their technologies and organizations to commercial markets. As a result, they penetrated a wide range of industrial sectors, transforming the Peninsula into the technological center of American industry.
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