Making Silicon Valley

Christophe Lcuyer's Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (MIT Press, 2004) traces the explosive growth of the personal computer industry in Silicon Valley to processes and practices that were established decades earlier in San Francisco. 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 innovative practices that made this growth possible by following key groups of engineers and entrepreneurs. He examines the outside forces that shaped Silicon Valley -- including military patronage and procurement -- analyzing how they affected innovation and technology within Silicon Valley.