How the West was won

摘要

It is part of the mythology of Silicon 1 Valley that its success owes a lot to the pioneering spirit that settled California. Britain's tech trailblazers have a western frontier of their own in "Silicon Gorge," a cluster of microchip firms around Bristol. Its origins can be traced to 1970s industrial policy. The then Labour government decided that Britain needed a microelectronics industry and in 1978 invested £50m ($96m) in a stake in Inmos, a new venture with a design team in Bristol and a chip plant in Newport, South Wales.