A Historical Tour of Silicon Valley - Slide Show

For an archeology of the high-tech industry in the San Francisco Bay Area
(or, better, a tour of organizations that contributed to the high-tech industry of the Bay Area)

An appendix to my book "A History of Silicon Valley"


World News | Politics | History | Editor | Correspondence
(Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi)

See this page for the full collection of Silicon Valley pictures.

If you would like to donate historical pictures, contact me.

The pictures below were mostly taken in 2010 and therefore do not reflect how the buildings originally looked like.


Map of the Bay Area


SIlicon Valley


Berkeley's South Hall, the oldest extant building on campus (1873)


Stanford's building 50, where the Physics Dept was (1891), next to the Memorial Church in the "quadrangle"


Alpine Inn, one of the few surviving buildings of the era when Stanford was built: 3915 Alpine Rd & Arastradero, Portola Valley, CA 94028


Stanford's "Engineering Corner", where Fred Terman used to work (1902)


The current tower is certainly a lot taller than the original building, but this is the site where in 1909 Charles Herrold established the first radio broadcasting station in the world: Fairmont Tower, 50 W. San Fernando St & First St, San Jose


The site of the laboratory and factory of Federal Telegraph Company (1911), where Lee de Forest worked: 913 Emerson St & Channing Ave, Palo Alto


Philo Farnsworth's laboratory (1927), where television was invented: 202 Green Street & Sansome, San Francisco


Fisher Research Laboratories (1931) was based in this house: 1505 Byron St, Palo Alto


Hewlett-Packard's garage (1937), where William Hewlett and David Packard started their business: 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto


U.C. Berkeley campus and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab


The location of Hewlett-Packard's first building (1942): 395 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto


Ampex's original building (1944): 1313 Laurel St., San Carlos


The street where Varian (1948) was started: Washington St, Sam Carlos


IBM's Western Lab (1952), where the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC) was built: 99 Notre Dame Street, San Jose


Shockley's Laboratory (1956): 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View


IBM Almaden Research Center (1986): 650 Harry Rd, San Jose


NASA Ames (1958): Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway, Mountain View


Fairchild (1959), the site where Robert Noyce and others co-invented the integrated circuit: 844 E Charleston Rd, Palo Alto


The building that became the corporate headquarters when HP moved to the Stanford Industrial Park (1960) and then HP Labs (1966): 1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto


The Palo Alto Research Laboratories of Lockheed Missiles & Space Company (LMSC): 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto


The area where the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) used to be, now Portola Pastures: 1600 Arastradero Road, Portola Valley


The building where Intel started (1968): 365 East Middlefield Road & Whisman, Mountain View


The Intel 4004 (Intel Museum)


The building where Alza was founded (1968) and where Teknowledge was located (1982): 525 University Avenue, Palo Alto


Stanford Research Institute (1969): 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA


Alfred Peet's first coffee shop on the corner of Walnut and Vine Streets in Berkeley


Venture capital's headquarters in Menlo Park (1969): 3000 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park


Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, where Genentech's first office (1975) was located and where countless start-ups were funded: 2750 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park


Xerox PARC (1970): 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto


Four Phase Systems started out in a former dentist's office (1969): 991 Commercial St, Palo Alto


Four Phase Systems' first offices (1970): 10420 North Tantau Drive, Cupertino


The location of Alza's first building, now Sonsini's office (1971): 950 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto


The building where Atari started (1972): 2962 Scott Blvd, Santa Clara


Olivetti Advanced Technology Centers (1972), one of the first outposts of European manufacturers: 10430 DeAnza Blvd, Cupertino


Byte Shop (1975), the first computer store that sold the first Apple I: 1063 West El Camino Real, Mountain View (courtesy Paul Terrell)


The auditorium of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Lab, where the Homebrew Club used to meet (1975): 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park


William Millard's Computer Shack store (1976), the beginning of retail chain Computerland: 22634 Foothill Blvd, Hayward


Steve Jobs' garage where Apple was started (1976): 2066 Crist Dr, Los Altos


Apple's first office (1976): 20863 Stevens Creek Blvd, Cupertino


The former location of Four Phase (10700 N. De Anza Boulevard, Cupertino), now Apple's Infinite Loop: DeAnza Blvd and 280 freeway, Cupertino


Genentech, the wall where building 1 used to stand (1976): 1 DNA Way, South San Francisco


Evans Hall in the Berkeley campus, where Bill Joy invented "vi" and assembled the BSD (1976)


The Omex/Precision Instruments building where Oracle started out as Software Development Laboratories (1977): 2323 Owen Street, Santa Clara


Xerox Alto (Computer History Museum)


The original building of 3Com (1979): 5403 Betsy Ross Dr, Santa Clara


IBM PC of 1981 (Computer History Museum)


Applied Biosystems (1981): 850 Lincoln Centre Drive, Foster City


SUN's first building (1982): 2310 Walsh Avenue, Santa Clara


The first Symantec building (1982): 306 Potrero, Sunnyvale


Cisco's first building (1984): 1525 O'Brien Dr, Menlo Park


The twin buildings of Synoptics (1984): 4401 Great America Parkway & Mission College, Santa Clara


Oracle's campus (1989): 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores


Google's founding place (1998): 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park


Google's first offices (1998), later Confinity/Paypal's second office (2000), and formerly Logitech's office: 165 University Avenue, Palo Alto


Affymetrix (1992): 3420 Central Expressway, Santa Clara


Vmware's "garage" (1998): 2 Coleman Place, Menlo Park


Excite's garage (1994): 3958 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto


The first Netscape offices were inside this HP campus (1995): 466 Ellis Street, Mountain View.


Fry's Electronics, the first electronic superstore: 1177 Kern Ave, Sunnyvale


The first Netscape building (1995): 501 E. Middlefield Rd. Mountain View


The first Yahoo building (1995): 3400 Central Expressway. Santa Clara


Yahoo's early screenshot


Yahoo's campus: 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale


Craigslist (1995): 1381 9th Ave, San Francisco


The first Hotmail buildings (1996): 1290 Oakmead Pkwy, Sunnyvale


Netflix (1997): 5617 Scotts Valley Drive, Suite 140, Scotts Valley


Scaruffi.com's screenshot of late 1990s


Google's early screenshot


Google's campus, formerly Silicon Graphics campus (1981): 2400 Bayshore Parkway, Mountain View


SUN's headquarters (1997) in the western campus of the Agnews Development Center: end of Palm Drive, Santa Clara


eBay (1998): 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose


Confinity/Paypal's first office (2000): 349 University Avenue, Palo Alto


Joint Genome Institute: 2800 Mitchell Drive Walnut Creek


Bloom Energy (2001): 1252 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale


Wikipedia's screenshot (2010)


Codexis (2002); 200 Penobscot Drive, Redwood City


Glam Media (2003); 8000 Marina Blvd, Brisbane


Tesla (2003): 3500 Deer Creek, Palo Alto


A Tesla model


Khosla Ventures (2004): 3000 Sand Hill Road, Building 3, Suite 190, Menlo Park - next door to the suite where Relational Software, later renamed Oracle, was located (1981): Suite 180


Amazon's Lab 126 (2004): 20450 Stevens Creek Blvd & DeAnza, Cupertino


Facebook's original building (2004): 156 University Ave, Palo Alto


Facebook's first webpage


House where Zuckerberg lived in Palo Alto


Facebook's screenshot


Solyndra (2005): 47700 Kato Road, Fremont


Letterman Digital Arts Center (2005) in the Presidio


YouTube (2005): 71 E 3rd Ave, Second Floor, San Mateo


Y Combinator (2005): 320 Pioneer Way, Mountain View

FORTHCOMING


Complete Genomics (2006): 2071 Stierlin Court, Mountain View


Twitter (2006): 795 Folsom, San Francisco


Peter Norvig of Google lecturing at Singularity University


Peter Norvig of Google lecturing at Singularity University


Ferrari in Redwood City, the largest Ferrari dealer in California: 2750 El Camino Real, Redwood City


Computer History Museum, formerly the headquarters of Silicon Graphics: 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard, Mountain View


An appendix to my book "A History of Silicon Valley"
World News | Politics | History | Editor | Correspondence