a several-hour tour

[calimac]

Another of the many tasks I wanted to complete before Potlatch has been finished, and that's updating my driving tour of historic Silicon Valley. I first wrote this up for a Potlatch in Oakland eleven years ago, so it needed geographic rejiggering, as well as a lot of updating. In the old version, Yahoo and Netscape were the hot young kids on the block, and Google isn't mentioned at all. (The search engine - which I first used a few months later - already existed, but the company didn't.)

I was never interested in computers for their own sake, and only developed an interest in computer history as a branch of specifically local history in the early 1980s, when Apple rose to fame and I saw how much of its history - and that of the (previously unknown to me) integrated circuit industry - had been taking place in my neighborhood and practically under my nose. So I started reading everything I could about Apple corporate history. Had my parents bought that other house we were looking at, I would have gone to Homestead High School three years behind Steve Jobs. A childhood friend of mine lived on the same block as Steve Wozniak, a fact I learned when, frustrated by the tantalizing but unspecific microgeography in Apple histories, I looked his parents up in an old phone book. I remember riding my bike past the Byte Shop at about the time it was selling the Apple I, though I certainly never went inside.

Over the years I picked up various tidbits of local tech history, both new and old, and had a collection of sites from the invention of the motion picture in the 1870s (Stanford) and of the vacuum tube around 1910 (Palo Alto), through that the disk drive (San Jose) and the integrated circuit (Palo Alto again) in the 1950s, down to current corporate campuses. And I put them all on my tour.

I needed some help in recent history. johnnyeponymous read the old version over and offered some suggestions. This Google history page is exactly the kind of specific trivia I needed. And this site cleared up for me a lot of apparent contradictions in the history of the Apple Mac. Other firms were more elusive. Everybody I know who's worked at Sun has been at the campus in the Menlo Park baylands, but apparently the company's headquarters is in Santa Clara. It's not the only firm with separated branches, but I'm not sure what the relationship of this one is, and there's little that I can find on corporate history trivia on their website. So my result is biased towards Apple, Google, and HP, for all three of which I have the sites of their original garages. (Google's is listed on their website, HP's actually has a state historic marker in front, and as for Apple's, the old phone books came to the rescue again.)

I went out over the last couple of days to test-drive the sections I'd re-routed to make sure the directions were clear, and that everything I'd last gone out looking for ten years ago is still there. I also looked through the computer history displays at Stanford's Gates Hall: I hadn't even known about the displays until johnnyeponymous told me about it. It's weirdly charming. Here's an Apple II+, a Commodore Pet, an Osborne (one of the oddest-looking computers ever), and a Trash-80: more early PC suckitude in one display case than you're ever likely elsewhere to see. And over here, a punch card impaled on a spindle. If anybody wonders what that word means in the once-famous caution, "Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate," here's the graphic evidence.

Comments

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

I've worked at the Sun "Headquarters" location in Santa Clara. It's built on the old Agnews state mental institution site, and some of the buildings are renovated relics of the institution.

The idea of Sun "Headquarters" was always kind of notional. What they seemed to do is list whatever building had the CEO's office as the HQ location, but then not bother updating the HQ location when the CEO's office moved, in order not to have to update stationery, business cards, etc. They'd keep the same location until Sun gave up the building involved. It was "building 2" on Garcia Ave. in Mtn View when I started in 1988 and a long time thereafter; it moved to the old Ford Aero building in Palo Alto (now the new Jewish Community Center); then to the Santa Clara building. Last I heard the CEO's office had moved to the Menlo Park campus.

I have a copy of the official history Sun published in 1992 for the 10th anniversary. It says the original startup location was 2310 Walsh Rd in Santa Clara.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Thanks; that clarifies things a little. I may add that initial address - which I recognize as being down in the business-park district of SCl - to the guide, since you kindly handed it to me. There's lots more I could get by hunting down old directories, but I'm less interested in early business offices than in actual garages.

One mystery never explained is a listing I once found, in a phone book from the late 70s, for Apple Computer at an address in the Sunnyvale baylands (not far from where Yahoo is now). I've never seen any indication that Apple was ever anywhere near there, and Allen had no explanation for it either when I asked him.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

Do you include the Computer History museum? It's interesting in its own right, especially since the Babbage Difference Engine #2 is there right now, and as the former HQ of SGI. The Difference Engine is definitely worth a trip. They demo it on Fridays at 2:00 and at 1:00 and 2:00 on Saturdays and Sundays.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Computer History Museum is one of three museums on the tour (Gates Hall, and the third is the Intel corporate museum). I didn't mention the Difference Engine on the tour, but it is mentioned in the Local Guide entry for the museum. We didn't give times for the demonstrations, because I understand those vary depending on docent availability and such: we said folk should phone.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

That's perfect. I hope people have time to go, it's really worth it.