Computer History Museum
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 19 months, 2010–2026
1:02:47 · 491K views · Dec 4, 2008
Steve Blank's Computer History Museum lecture argues that Silicon Valley's roots lie in WWII radar and electronic warfare work, Stanford's Fred Terman and Cold War military funding rather than the semiconductor alone.
HN commenters call it a favorite introduction to Valley history and cite it whenever government and military funding of tech comes up.
20 comments from Hacker News
You've gotta watch Steve Blank's "The Secret History of Silicon Valley". Goes back to its post-war roots in 40's and 50's. A real gem and quite surprising. this video
When I first moved here my favorite introduction to the valleys history was Steve Blanks The Secret History of Silicon Valley. It's well worth the hour this video
Yes, Silicon Valley grew out of quite sophisticated WW2 military R&D, so quite similar to USSR actually. I like this talk given at the Computer History Museum about the history of Silicon Valley, which was secret for many years: this video You can argue USSR lacked followup demand for computing from outside the military, and that this was caused by organizational issues. It’s probably pretty important to also state the relative wealth disparity at the start of the relevant period, from 1940 onwards, say. Russia was basically feudal in 1910, and it would be hard for advancement to catch up to US levels by 1940 no matter the organization of the economy, and then we have to account for the devastation of WW2 which followed (WW2 was expensive for US, but it didn’t lose industrial capacity except via opportunity cost). I don’t say this as any kind of apologia, but think it makes more sense to compare USSR to less developed countries than US — where it still doesn’t compare favorably in many ways, but it’s far more interesting and debatable.
I see a lot of comments addressed to "this guy" referring to Steve Blank. Let's not forget he's been involved in silicon valley startups since the 70s, including founding semiconductor companies. While they're no hello world rails startup, he has a proven track record and a first-hand experience of how the valley has evolved. I suspect many of you haven't seen his take on the history of the valley, which might give context to his views. this video
Related thread: `Ask HN: What's the best book on the early history of the Internet and/or Web?` [LINK] My previous reco: Not a book, but a great video via Steve Blank: this video Also `Bret Victor The Future of Programming`, which is misleading as above is performance piece where title slide reads `1973` [LINK]