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A Timeline of Silicon ValleyAn appendix to the book "A History of Silicon Valley"Editor | Correspondence | Purchase the book See also: A visual history of Silicon Valley | A slide presentation of Silicon Valley (Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi) |
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(Lines in parentheses are about events that did not take place in the Bay Area but affected the development of computers)
See also A Historical Tour of Silicon Valley - Slide Show (1885: William Burroughs develops an adding machine) 1887: The Lick Observatory is erected near San Jose, the world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory (1890: Hermann Hollerith's tabulator is chosen for the national census) 1891: Leland and Jane Stanford found Stanford University near Palo Alto (1906: Lee DeForest invents the vacuum tube) 1906: The San Francisco earthquake and fire 1909: Stanford University's president David Starr Jordan invests $500 in Lee DeForest's audion tube, the first major venture-capital investment in the region 1909: Charles Herrold in San Jose starts the first radio station in the USA with regularly scheduled programming 1909: Cyril Elwell founds the Federal Telegraph Corporation (FTC) in Palo Alto to create the world's first global radio communication system (1911: Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company is acquired by a new company that will change name to International Bussiness Machines or IBM in 1924) 1915: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition is held in San Francisco, for which Bernard Maybeck builds the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco 1916: General Motors opens a large Chevrolet automobile factory in Oakland 1917: Edwin Pridham and Peter Jensen found the electronics company Magnavox in Napa 1921: Ansel Adams publishes his first photographs of Yosemite 1925: Frederick Terman joins Stanford University to teach electronics electrical engineering and encourages his students to start businesses in California (1925: Burroughs introduces a portable adding machine) (1925: AT&T and Western Electric form the Bell Labs in New York) 1927: Philo Farnsworth invents all-electronic television broadcasting while in San Francisco (1927: Fritz Pfleumer in Germany invents the magnetic tape) 1929: The physicist Robert Oppenheimer joins UC Berkeley 1931: Ernest Lawrence designs the first successful cyclotron and founds the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories 1933: The Navy opens a base at NAS Sunnyvale (later renamed Moffett Field) 1934: The first lesbian nightclub opens in San Francisco, "Mona's" (1935: Germany's AEG introduces the first tape recorder) 1936: San Francisco builds the longest bridge in the world, the "Bay Bridge" 1936: Joe Finocchio opens the gay bar "Finocchio's" in San Francisco (1937: Alan Turing describes a machine capable of performing logical reasoning, the "Turing Machine") (1936: John Lawrence, brother of Lawrence Berkeley Labs' founder, starts the Donner Laboratory to conduct research in nuclear medicine 1937: Stanford University's professor William Hansen teams with brothers Sigurd and Russell Varian to develop the klystron tube, used in the early radars 1937: The Golden Gate Bridge is completed in San Francisco (1938: John Atanasoff at Iowa State College conceives the electronic digital computer) 1939: Fred Terman's students William Hewlett and David Packard start a company to produce their audio-oscillator 1939: Walt Disney becomes the first customer of Hewlett-Packard, purchasing their oscillator for the animation film "Fantasia" 1939: Ernest Lawrence is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1939: The USA government establishes the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (later renamed Ames Research Center) at Moffett Field 1941: Stanford University's professor Fred Terman is put in charge of the top-secret Harvard Radio Research Laboratory 1941: Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan at UC Berkeley produce a new element, plutonium 1942: The USA government launches the "Manhattan Project" to build a nuclear bomb under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer 1942: The health-care organization Kaiser Permanente is founded in Oakland (1943: Tommy Flowers and others build the Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer) (1943: Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts describe an artificial neuron) 1944: Frank Malina founds the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 1944: Alexander Poniatoff founds Ampex (1944: Howard Aiken of IBM unveils the first computer programmed by punched paper tape, the Harvard Mark I) (1945: Vannevar Bush proposes the "Memex" desk-based machine) (1945: John Von Neumann designs a computer that holds its own instructions, the "stored-program architecture") (1945: IBM establishes the (later Watson Research Center) Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University in New York) 1946: The Stanford Research Institute is founded 1946: Blacks constitute about 12% of Oakland's population (1946: The first venture capital firms are founded in the USA, American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) by former Harvard Business School's dean Georges Doriot, J.H. Whitney & Company by John Hay Whitney, Rockefeller Brothers by Laurance Rockefeller (later renamed Venrock) 1946: John Northrop and Wendell Stanley of UC Berkeley are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1946: Fred Terman returns to Stanford University as the dean of the engineering school and founds the Electronics Research Lab (ERL), mostly founded by the USA military (1946: The first non-military computer, ENIAC, or "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer", is unveiled, built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania (1947: AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratory's engineers John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain demonstrate the principle of amplifying an electrical current using a solid semiconducting material, i.e. the "transistor") (1947: Norbert Wiener founds Cybernetics) (1947: John Von Neumann describes self-reproducing automata) 1947: Ampex introduces a magnetic tape recorder 1948: The Varian brothers found Varian Associates (1948: The first programmable computer, the "Manchester Baby", runs the first program) (1948: Claude Shannon founds Information Theory and coins the term "bit") 1949: William Giauque of UC Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry) 1950: Turing proposes a test to determine whether a machine is intelligent or not (1950: Remington Rand purchases Eckert-Mauchly Computer) 1951: The Stanford Industrial Park is conceived 1951: Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan of U.C. Berkeley are awarded the Nobel Prize (1951: The first commercial computers, the Ferranti and the Univac (1951: A team led by Jay Forrester at the MIT builds the "Whirlwind" computer, the first real-time system and the first computer to use a video display for output) 1952: IBM opens its first West Coast laboratory in San Jose (later Almaden Research Center) 1952: Felix Bloch of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, the first for Stanford 1952: The Atomic Energy Commission establishes a Livermore Laboratory as a branch of the UC Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory 1953: Varian is the first tenant of the Stanford Industrial Park 1953: The CIA finances a project named "MkUltra" to study the effects of psychoactive drugs 1953: Electronics manufacturer Sylvania opens its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View 1953: Lawrence Ferlinghetti founds a bookstore in San Francisco, "City Lights", that becomes the headquarters of alternative writers (1954: Remington Rand introduces UNIVAC 1103, the first computer with magnetic-core RAM (1954: IBM introduces its first computer model, the 704 1954: David Bohannon opens the Hillsdale Shopping Center, a suburban shopping mall 1956: IBM's San Jose labs invent the hard-disk drive Mar 1956: Berkeley's professor Harry Huskey designs Bendix's first digital computer, the G-15 (1954: George Devol designs the first industrial robot, Unimate) 1955: The first conference on Artificial Intelligence is held at Dartmouth College, organized by John McCarthy Sep 1955: The Stanford Research Institute demonstrates the ERMA computer 1955: The "Daughters of Bilitis" is founded in San Francisco, the first exclusively Lesbian organization in the USA 1955: Stanford University hires Carl Djerassi 1955: Allen Ginsberg's recitation of his poem "Howl" transplants the "Beat" aesthetic to San Francisco 1955: Private investors or "angels" (including John Bryan, Bill Edwards and Reid Dennis) establish "The Group" to invest together in promising companies (1955: Alexander Schure founds the New York Institute of Technology) (1955: Remington Rand merges with Sperry to form Sperry Rand) 1955: Stanford University merges the Applied Electronics Laboratory and the Electronics Research Laboratory into the Systems Engineering Laboratory under the direction of Fred Terman and focusing on electronic warfare 1956: William Shockley founds the Shockley Transistor Corporation in Mountain View to produce semiconductor-based transistors to replace vacuum tubes, and hires Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and others 1956: Charles Ginsburg of Ampex Corporation builds the first practical videotape recorder 1956: Aircraft company Lockheed opens an electronics research laboratory in the Stanford Industrial Park and a manufacturing facility in Sunnyvale (1956: Werner Buchholz of IBM coins the term "byte") (Apr 1957: John Backus of IBM introduces the FORTRAN programming language, the first practical machine-independent language) 1957: Stock options are offered to the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor Oct 1957: Several engineers (including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore) quit the Shockley Transistor laboratories and form Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View, using funding from Fairchild Camera and Instrument (1957: ARDC invests $70,000 in Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) (1957: Max Mathews begins composing computer music at Bell Laboratories) 1957: Dean Watkins of Stanford's ERL founds Watkins-Johnson, one of the first venture-capital funded companies in the Santa Clara Valley (1957: Allen Newell and Herbert Simon develop the "General Problem Solver") (1957: Frank Rosenblatt conceives the "Perceptron", a neural computer that can learn by trial and error) (1957: Morton Heilig invents the "Sensorama Machine", a pioneering virtual-reality environment) (1957: Former SAGE engineer Ken Olsen founds the Digital Equipment Corporation) 1957: Rockefeller Brothers invests in Fairchild Semiconductor, the first venture-funded startup of the Bay Area (1958: Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments invents the integrated circuit, a micro-sized silicon device containing a large number of electronic switches) (1958: Charles Townes of Columbia theorizes about an optical maser and his student Gordon Gould builds one and names it "LASER" or "Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation") 1958: Draper, Gaither and Anderson is founded, the first professional venture-capital firm in California 1958: NASA opens a research center near Mountain View 1959: The first commercial Xerox plain-paper photocopier goes on sale 1959: Eveready (later renamed Energizer) introduces the alkaline battery 1959: Jean Hoerni at Fairchild Semiconductor invents the planar process that enables great precision in silicon components, and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor designs a planar integrated circuit (1959: The MIT launches the "Computer-Aided Design Project") 1959: Dancer and mime Ron Davis founds the San Francisco Mime Troupe 1959: Arthur Kornberg of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine 1959: Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs are awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the antiproton 1959: Frank Chambers founds the venture-capital company Continental Capital 1959: GTE buys Sylvania 1959: Several Stanford students volunteer to take part in the CIA project "MkUltra" to study the effects of psychoactive drugs (1960: William Fetter of Boeing coins the expression "computer graphics") (1960: Digital Equipment introduces the first minicomputer, the PDP-1 (Program Data Processor), that comes with a keyboard and a monitor (1960: Theodore Maiman of the Hughes Research Laboratory demonstrates the first working laser) 1960: Donald Glaser of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs is awarded the Nobel Prize 1960: Wayne Thiebaud at U.C. Davis pioneers "pop art" 1960: John McCarthy speculates that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility" (1961: Joe Orlicky of JI Case pioneers Material Requirements Planning or MRP) 1961: Laurence Spitters founds Memorex (Sep 1961: Max Palevsky forms Scientific Data Systems) (1961: Charles Bachman at General Electric develops the first database management system, IDS) (1961: Philco unveils the first head-mounted display) (1961: Fernando Corbato at the MIT creates the first working time-sharing system, CTSS or "Compatible Time Sharing System", that allowed to remotely access a computer, an IBM 7090/94) (1961: IBM owns more than 81% of the computer market) (1961: General Motors unveils "Unimate", the first industrial robot) 1961: Robert Hofstadter of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1961: Melvin Calvin of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs is awarded the Nobel Prize 1961: Tommy Davis founds one of Santa Clara Valley's first venture-capital firms with Arthur Rock, Davis & Rock 1962: The San Francisco Tape Music Center for avantgarde music is established by composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender (1962: Paul Baran proposes a distributed network as the form of communication least vulnerable to a nuclear strike) (1962: Steve Russell and others at the MIT implement the computer game "Spacewar" on a PDP-1) 1962: Stanford University founds the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) 1962: Bill Draper and Franklin Johnson form the venture-capital firm Draper and Johnson Investment Company 1962: Michael Murphy founds the "Esalen Institute" at Big Sur to promote spiritual healing (1962: The first commercial modem is manufactured by AT&T) 1963: Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute builds the first prototype of the "mouse" 1963: John McCarthy moves to Stanford 1963: Syntex, a pioneer of biotechnology, moves from Mexico City to the Stanford Industrial Park (1963: The "American Standard Code for Information Interchange" or "ASCII" is introduced (1963: Ivan Sutherland of the MIT demonstrates "Sketchpad", a computer graphics program, and the first program ever with a graphical user interface) (1964: IBM introduces the first "mainframe" computer, the 360, and the first "operating system", the OS/360) 1964: Syntex introduces the birth-control pill (1964: Robert Moog begins selling his synthesizer) 1964: Mario Savio founds the "Free Speech Movement" and leads student riots at the Berkeley campus 1964: Bill Draper and Paul Wythes form Sutter Hill Ventures 1964: MkUltra's alumnus Ken Kesey organizes the "Merry Pranksters" who travel around the country in a "Magic Bus", live in a commune in La Honda and experiment with "acid tests" (LSD) (1964: John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz invent the BASIC programming language) (1964: American Airlines' SABRE reservation system, developed by IBM, is the first online transaction processing 1964: Former Sylviania employee Bill Perry founds computer-based electronic-intelligence company ESL Apr 1965: Gordon Moore predicts that the processing power of computers will double every 18 months ("Moore's law") Jun 1965: The Grateful Dead debut in Menlo Park Sep 1965: Ben Jacopetti inaugurates the Open Theater as a vehicle devoted to multimedia performances for the Berkeley Experimental Arts Foundation 1965: Owsley "Bear" Stanley synthesizes crystalline LSD 1965: Lotfi Zadeh invents Fuzzy Logic 1965: George Hunter of the Charlatans introduces the "light show" in rock concerts 1965: Former Ampex employee Ray Dolby founds the Dolby Labs while in Britain (relocating it to San Francisco in 1976) 1965: Ron Davis of the San Francisco Mime Troupe publishes the essay "Guerrilla Theatre" 1965: The Family Dog Production organizes the first hippie festival in San Francisco 1965: Terry Riley composes "In C", music based on repetition of simple patterns ("minimalism") 1965: Edward Feigenbaum leads development of the expert system "Dendral" at Stanford University (1965: The Digital Equipment Corporation unveils the first successful mini-computer, the PDP-8) (1965: European computer manufacturer Olivetti introduces the first affordable programmable electronic desktop computer, the P101) Jan 1966: Steward Brand organizes the "Trips Festival" putting together Ken Kesey's "Acid Test", Jacopetti's Open Theater, Sender's Tape Music Center and rock bands 1966: John McCarthy opens the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) 1966: The first "Summer of Love" of the hippies is held in San Francisco, and a three-day "Acid Test" is held in San Francisco with the Grateful Dead performing 1966: Hewlett-Packard enters the business of general-purpose computers with the HP-2116 1966: Willie Brown organizes the Artists Liberation Front of San Francisco-based artists at the Mime Troupe's Howard Street loft 1966: The first issue of the San Francisco Oracle, an underground cooperative publication, is published 1966: Tymshare starts one of the most popular time-sharing service and creates a circuit-switched network 1966: Emmett Grogan and members of the Mime Troupe found the "Diggers", a group of improvising actors and activists whose stage was the streets and parks of the Haight-Ashbury and whose utopia was the creation of a Free City 1966: Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and other African-American activists found the socialist-inspired and black-nationalist "Black Panther Party" at Oakland 1966: There are 2,623 computers in the USA (1,967 work for the Defense Department) 1966: Donald Buchla develops a voltage-controlled synthesizer for composer Morton Subotnick, the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System 1966: The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is inaugurated (1967: Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) develops the first hand-held calculator) 1967: A "Human Be-In" is held at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco 1967: Monterey hosts a rock festival 1968: Stewart Brand publishes the first "Whole Earth Catalog" 1968: David Evans and Ivan Sutherland form Evans & Sutherland 1968: Tymshare creates a circuit-switched network, Tymnet Jul 1968: Philip Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove found Intel ("Integrated Electronics") to build memory chips (1968: The hypertext system FRESS created by Andries van Dam at Brown University for the IBM 360 introduces the "undo" feature) (1968: ARDC's investment in Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is valued at $355 million (1968: Computer Science Corp becomes the first software company to be listed at the New York stock market) (1968: Dutch mathematician Edsger Dijkstra writes "GO TO Statement Considered Harmful") (1968: Barclays Bank installs networked "automated teller machines" or ATMs) 1968: John Portman designs the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco 1968: William Hambrecht and George Quist found the investment company Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco 1968: Frank Malina founds Leonardo ISAST in Paris, an organization devoted to art/science fusion 1968: John Bryan and Bill Edwards found the investment company Bryan & Edwards 1968: Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute demonstrates the NLS ("oN-Line System"), the first system to employ the mouse 1968: Luis Alvarez of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs is awarded the Nobel Prize 1969: Gary Starkweather of Xerox invents the laser printer (1969: Ivan Sutherland builds the first virtual-reality system) (1969: Compuserve's dial-up service) May 1969: Xerox buys Scientific Data Systems (SDS) 1969: Advanced Micro Devices is founded by Jerry Sanders and other engineers from Fairchild Semiconductor 1969: The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) demonstrates Shakey the Robot 1969: Frank Oppenheimer founds the San Francisco Exploratorium as a museum of science, art and human perception 1969: Construction begins at 3000 Sand Hill Road, in Menlo Park, soon to become the headquarters of the venture-capital community (1969: Ted Codd of IBM invents the relational database) 1969: Bell Labs unveils the Unix operating system developed by Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie 1969: The computer network Arpanet is inaugurated with four nodes, three of which are in California (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute and UC Santa Barbara) 1969: Leo Laurence in San Francisco calls for the "Homosexual Revolution" 1969: Four Stanford students found ROLM to design computers for the military 1970: Intel introduces the first commercially successful 1K DRAM chip 1970: Lee Boysel at Four Phase Systems designs the AL1, a commercial microprocessors (an 8-bit CPU) 1970: The first "San Francisco Gay Pride Parade" is held in San Francisco 1970: Gays and lesbians start moving to the "Castro" district of San Francisco in large numbers (1970: The first practical optical fiber is developed by glass maker Corning Glass Works) (1970: Edgar Codd at IBM introduces the concept of a relational database) 1970: Five of the seven largest USA semiconductor manufacturers are located in Santa Clara Valley 1970: Xerox opens the Palo Alto Research Center or PARC 1970: Alan Kay joins Xerox PARC to work on object-oriented programming 1970: Stanford's Ed Feigenbaum launches the Heuristic Programming Project for research in Artificial Intelligence 1971: The government bans AT&T from entering the data-processing business 1971: Pierluigi Nervi builds St Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco 1971: Berkeley's nuclear physicist Donald Glaser founds Cetus Corporation, the first biotech company of the Bay Area 1971: Film director George Lucas founds the film production company Lucasfilm 1971: David Noble at IBM invents the floppy disk 1971: Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney create the first arcade video game, "Computer Space" 1971: Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin at Intel build the first universal micro-processor, a programmable set of integrated circuits, i.e. a computer on a chip (1971: Ray Tomlinson at Bolt, Beranek and Newman invents email for sending messages between computer users, and invents a system to identify the user name and the computer name separated by a "@") 1971: Intel unveils the first commercially available microprocessor, the 4004 1972: At least 60 semiconductor companies have been founded in Silicon Valley between 1961 and 1972, mostly by former Fairchild engineers and managers 1972: European manufacturer Olivetti establishes an Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) in Cupertino 1972: Intel introduces the 8008 microprocessor, whose eight-bit word allowed to represent 256 characters, including all ten digits, both uppercase and lowercase letters and punctuation marks 1972: Magnavox introduces the first videogame console, the "Odyssey" 1972: Nolan Bushnell invents the first videogame, "Pong", an evolution of Magnavox's Odyssey, and founds Atari 1972: Venture-capitalist company Kleiner-Perkins, founded by Austrian-born Eugene Kleiner of Fairchild Semiconductor and former Hewlett-Packard executive Tom Perkins, opens offices in Menlo Park on Sand Hill Rd, followed by Don Valentine of Fairchild Semiconductor who founds Capital Management Services, later renamed Sequoia Capital 1972: Electronics writer Don Hoeffler coins the term "Silicon Valley" (1972: A novel by David Gerrold coins the term "computer virus") (1972: IBM engineers in Mannheim, Germany, found Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung or SAP) 1972: Bruce Buchanan leads development of the expert system "Mycin" at Stanford University 1972: European computer manufacturer Olivetti opens a research center in Cupertino (the "Advanced Technology Centre") 1973: Lynn Hershman creates the first site-specific installation, "The Dante Hotel" 1973: Efrem Lipkin, Mark Szpakowski, and Lee Felsenstein start the "Community Memory", the first public computerized bulletin board system 1973: Stanley Cohen of Stanford University and Herbert Boyer of UC San Francisco create the first recombinant DNA organism, virtually inventing "biotechnology" (1973: Automatic Electronic Systems of Canada introduces the "AES-90", a "word processor" that combines a CRT-screen, a floppy-disk and a microprocessor) (1973: Vietnamese-born engineer Andre Truong Trong Thi uses the 8008 to build the computer Micral) (1973: Japan's Sharp develops the LCD or "Liquid Crystal Display" technology) 1973: Intel introduces a CPU named 8088 1973: William Pereira builds the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (1973: Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first portable, wireless or "cellular" telephone) 1973: Vinton Cerf of Stanford University coins the term "Internet" 1973: The Arpanet has 2,000 users 1973: Gary Kildall in Monterey invents the first operating system for a microprocessor, the CP/M 1974: Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800 (1974: The barcode, invented by George Laurer at IBM, debuts) 1974: Donald Chamberlin at IBM's San Jose laboratories invents SQL 1974: Xerox's PARC unveils the "Alto", the first workstation with a "mouse" 1974: Paul Flory of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1974: Reid Dennis and Burton McMurtry found the investment company Institutional Venture Associates 1974: Philips acquires Magnavox 1974: Tommy Davis launches the Mayfield Fund 1974: (Sam Hurst invents the touch-screen user interface) 1974: Vint Cerf of Stanford and others publish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) 1974: The Ant Farm art collective creates the installation "Cadillac Farm" (1974: The Polish geneticist Waclaw Szybalski coins the term "synthetic biology") 1975: Xerox PARC debuts the first GUI or "Graphical User Interface" (1975: Steven Sasson at Kodak invents the digital camera) 1975: Advanced Micro Devices introduces a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor 1975: John Chowning and Leland Smith at Stanford found a computer music lab, later renamed Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) (1975: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith establish the Computer Graphics Laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology) (1975: Ed Roberts in New Mexico introduces the Altair 8800 based on an Intel microprocessor and sold as a mail-order kit) (1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of BASIC for the Altair personal computer and found Microsoft) 1975: Steve Wozniak and others found the "Homebrew Computer Club" (1975: John Holland describes Genetic Algorithms ) 1976: Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form Apple Computer and build the first microcomputer in Jobs' garage in Cupertino. 1976: Stanford University researchers (Martin Hellman, Ralph Merkle and Whitfield Diffie) describe the concept of public-key cryptography 1976: Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC deploys the first "Ethernet" for local area networks 1976: Bill Joy writes the "vi" text editor for Unix 1976: William Ackerman founds Windham Hill to promote his "new age" music 1976: Burton Richter of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics Apr 1976: Biochemist Herbert Boyer and venture capitalist Robert Swanson found Genentech, the first major biotech company (1976: Ed Catmull and Fred Parke's computer animation in a scene of the film "Futureworld" is the first to use 3D computer graphics) 1976: Institutional Venture Associates splits into two partnerships, McMurtry's Technology Venture Associates and Dennis' Institutional Venture Partners 1976: ROLM introduces a digital switch, the CBX (a computer-based PBX) (1976: MOS Technology introduces the 6502 processor) 1977: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak develop the Apple II using the 6502 processor 1977: Bill Joy at U.C. Berkeley ships the first BSD version of Unix 1974: IBM's San Jose laboratories unveils the relational database system System R 1977: 27,000 people are employed in the Semiconductor industry of Silicon Valley 1977: San Francisco's city supervisor Harvey Milk becomes the first openly gay man to be elected to office in the USA 1977: George Coates founds his multimedia theater group, Performance Works 1977: UC Berkeley develops the "Berkeley Software Distribution" (BSD), better known as "Berkeley Unix", a variant of the Unix operating system Aug 1977: Larry Ellison founds the Software Development Laboratories, later renamed Oracle Corporation 1977: Atari introduces a videogame console, the 2600, based on the 6502 processor 1977: Dave Smith builds the "Prophet 5", the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument, the first polyphonic and programmable synthesizer (1977: Dennis Hayes of National Data Corporation invents the PC modem, a device that converts between analog and digital signals) (1978: Toshihiro Nishikado creates the first blockbuster videogame, "Space Invaders") 1978: The rainbow flag debuts at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade (1978: The Global Positioning System or GPS is inaugurated by the USA military (1978: Mark Pauline founds the Survival Research Laboratories 1978: Apple launches a project to design a personal computer with a graphical user interface 1978: Atari announces the Atari 800, designed by Jay Miner 1978: David Goeddel and Dennis Kleid of Genentech produces the first genetically-engineered insulin (1979: Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) debuts the world's first cellular network) 1979: Dan Bricklin develops VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers (1979: Andy Lippman's Aspen Movie Map, the first navigator software) 1979: Larry Michels founds the first Unix consulting company, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) 1979: Michael Stonebraker at U.C. Berkeley unveils a relational database system, Ingres 1979: University of California at Berkeley launches the "Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations" project or "Serendip" 1979: Lucasfilm hires Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology to lead the Graphics Group of its Computer Division 1979: Kevin MacKenzie invents symbols such as :-), or "emoticons", to mimic the cues of face-to-face communication 1979: John Shoch of Xerox's PARC coins the term "worm" to describe a program that travels through a network of computers 1980: The Arpanet has 430,000 users, who exchange almost 100 million email messages a year (1980: NESELCO introduces a touch-screen computer) 1980: John Searle publishes the article on the "Chinese Room" that attacks Artificial Intelligence 1980: Sonya Rapoport creates the interactive audio/visual installation "Objects on my Dresser" 1980: Seagate Technology introduces the first hard-disk drive for personal computers 1980: Doug and Gary Carlston found the videogame company Broderbund 1980: Paul Berg of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1980: Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz of UC Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1980: Integrated circuits incorporate 100,000 discrete components 1980: The Usenet is born, an Arpanet-based discussion system divided in "newsgroups" 1980: Apple goes public for a record $1.3 billion 1980: UC Davis researchers found biotech company Calgene 1980: John Doerr joins Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers 1980: Ed Feigenbaum and others found IntelliGenetics (later Intellicorp), an early Artificial Intelligence and biotech startup (1980: Sony introduces the double-sided, double-density 3.5" floppy disk that holds 875 kilobyte) 1980: Onyx launches the first microcomputer running the Unix operating system 1981: The Xerox 8010 Star Information System is the first commercial computer that uses a mouse 1980: David Patterson and Carlo Sequin launch a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) project at U.C. Berkeley 1981: John Hennessy starts a RISC project at Stanford University 1981: Ed Feigenbaum and others found Teknowledge, the first major startup to develop "expert systems" 1981: Arthur Schawlow of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1981: Roger Malina relocates Leonardo ISAST from Paris to San Francisco Oct 1981: Jim Clark of Stanford University and Abbey Silverstone of Xerox found Silicon Graphics in Sunnyvale to manufacture graphic workstations (Aug 1981: The IBM PC is launched, running an operating system developed by Bill Gates' Microsoft) 1981: Andreas Bechtolsheim at Stanford University builds a workstation running Unix and networking software Dec 1982: John Warnock and Charles Geschke of Xerox PARC develop PostScript and found Adobe to commercialize it (1982: John Hopfield describes a new generation of neural networks) (1982: Thomas Zimmerman of IBM Almaden builds the first commercially-available dataglove 1982: Stanford students Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy (a former Onyx employee) and former Berkeley student Bill Joy found SUN Microsystems, named after the "Stanford University Network", to manufacture workstations 1982: Apple's employee Trip Hawkins founds Electronic Arts to create home computer games 1982: John Walker founds Autodesk to sell computer-aided design software 1982: Gary Hendrix founds Symantec (1982: Nastec introduces the term "Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE)" for its suite of software development tools) Jan 1983: The Lotus Development Corporation, founded by Mitchell Kapor, introduces the spreadsheet program "Lotus 1-2-3" for MS-DOS developed by Jonathan Sachs 1983: Gavilan, founded by Manuel Fernandez, former CEO of Zilog, introduces the first portable computer marketed as a "laptop" 1983: Crash of the videogame console market Mar 1983: Compaq introduces the Portable PC, compatible with the IBM PC 1983: The Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol or "TCP/IP" running on Unix BSD 4.2 debuts on the Arpanet, and the Arpanet is officially renamed Internet 1983: Paul Mockapetris invents the Domain Name System for the Internet to classify Internet addresses through extensions such as .com Jan 1983: Apple introduces the "Lisa", the first personal computer with a graphical user interface 1983: Henry Taube of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1983: The Musical Instrument Digital Interface is introduced, based on an idea by Dave Smith (1983: William Inmon builds the first data warehousing system) 1983: Gerard Debreu of UC Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (1983: Nintendo releases the Family Computer, renamed Nintendo Entertainment System in the USA) 1984: Cisco is founded by Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner (1984: Michael Dell, a student at University of Texas at Austin, founds PCs Limited, later renamed Dell, to sell custom PC-compatible computers by mail-order only) (1984: Psion introduces the first personal digital assistant, the first hand-held computer) 1984: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute is founded by Thomas Pierson and Jill Tarter 1984: Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin develop "Presentation", an application to create slide presentations (later renamed "PowerPoint") 1984: Michael McGreevy creates the first virtual-reality environment at NASA Ames (1984: Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner found the MIT Media Lab) (1984: General Motors builds a factory that uses Supply Chain Management software) (1984: Wavefront introduces the first commercial 3D-graphics software) 1984: Hewlett-Packard introduces the first ink-jet printer Jan 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh, which revolutionizes desktop publishing (1984: William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer" popularizes the "cyberpunks") (1984: The CDROM is introduced by Sony and Philips) (1984: The CADRE laboratory ("Computers in Art, Design, Research, and Education") is established at San Jose State University (1984: Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba invents flash memory, a cheaper kind of EEPROM) 1985: Stewart Brand creates the "Whole Earth Lectronic Link" (or "WELL"), a virtual community of computer users structured in bulletin boards for online discussions 1985: Digital Research introduces GEM (Graphical Environment Manager), a graphical-user interface for the CP/M operating system designed by former Xerox PARC employee Lee Jay Lorenzen (1985: Microsoft releases Windows 1.0 for MS-DOS) (1985: Commodore launches the Amiga 1000, a 16-bit home computer with advanced graphical and audio (multimedia) designed by former Atari employee Jay Miner and running a multitasking operating system and GUI designed by Carl Sassenrath) 1985: Richard Stallman founds the non-profit organization "Free Software Foundation" (FSF) 1985: Hewlett Packard introduces the LaserJet, a printer for the home market 1985: Jobs and Wozniak leave Apple (Jul 1985: Aldus introduces PageMaker for the Macintosh, the first system for desktop publishing) 1985: A crisis in the semiconductor industry is brought about by the dumping of cheaper Japanese products (1985: Richard Stallman releases a free operating system, "GNU") 1985: Warren Robinett, Scott Fisher and Michael McGreevy of NASA Ames build the "Virtual Environment Workstation" for virtual-reality research, incorporating the first dataglove and the first low-cost head-mounted display (1985: Microsoft ships the "Windows" operating system) (1985: Jim Kimsey founds Quantum Computer Services (later renamed America Online) to provide dedicated online services for personal computers) 1985: The Arpanet is renamed Internet 1985: Jaron Lanier founds VPL Research, the first company to sell Virtual Reality products 1985: Robert Sinsheimer organizes a meeting in Santa Cruz of biologists to discuss the feasibility of sequencing the entire human genome 1986: Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs buys Lucasfilms' Pixar, that becomes an independent film studio run by Ed Catmull 1986: A book by Eric Drexler popularizes the term "nanotechnology" (1986: Phil Katz invents the zip compression format for his program Pkzip) (1986: A virus spread among IBM PCs, nicknamed "Brain") 1986: Larry Harvey starts the first "Burning Man" on Baker Beach in San Francisco 1986: Judy Malloy publishes the computer-mediated hyper-novel "Uncle Roger" on the WELL 1986: Renzo Piano builds the California Academy of Science in San Francisco 1986: Yuan Lee of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs is awarded the Nobel Prize 1987: Chris Langton coins the term "Artificial Life" 1987: Jerry Kaplan and others found GO Corporation to manufacture portable computers with a pen-based user interface 1987: David Duffield and Ken Morris found PeopleSoft to manufacture Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications (1987: The JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format is introduced) (1987: Linus Technologies introduces the first pen-based computer, WriteTop) 1987: Bill Atkinson at Apple creates the hypermedia system HyperCard (1987: Uunet becomes the first commercial Internet Service Provider, ISP) 1988: "Morris", the first digital worm, infects most of the Internet 1988: Steven Benner organizes the conference "Redesigning the Molecules of Life', the first major conference on synthetic biology (1988: Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) that provids broadband on a phone line is invented by Bellcore) (1988: 3D Systems introduces the first 3D printer) 1989: UC Berkeley introduces the "BSD license", one of the first open-source licences 1989: Adobe releases Photoshop (1989: Barry Shein founds the first Internet Service Provider, "The World", in Boston) 1990: Richard Taylor of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and William Sharpe of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 1990: Between 1970 and 1990 the population of San Jose has almost doubled, from 445,779 to 782,248 (1990: Dycam introduces the first digital camera, Model 1) (1990: Microsoft announced that it will stop working on OS/2) (1990: The "Human Genome Project" is launched to decipher human DNA) 1990: Michael West founds the biotech company Geron that pioneers commercial applications of regenerative medicine (1990: Tim Berners-Lee of CERN invents the HyperText Markup Language "HTML" and demonstrates the World-Wide Web) (1990: The first Internet search engine, "Archie", is developed in Montreal) 1990: LaRoche acquires a majority stake in Genentech (1991: The World-Wide Web debuts on the Internet) (1991: United Technologies Corporation becomes the first company to market a fuel-cell system) (1991: Microsoft has revenues of $1,843,432,000 and 8,226 employees) (1991: Finnish student Linus Torvalds introduces the Linux operating system, a variant of Unix) (1991: Paul Lindner and Mark McCahill of the University of Minnesota release "Gopher", a software program to access the World-Wide Web) 1991: Pei-Yuan Wei introduces a "browser" for the world-wide web, Viola Dec 1991: Apple introduces QuickTime 1992: Macromedia is founded in San Francisco 1992: Timothy May founds the "cypherpunks" forum 1992: Intel is the world's largest semiconductor company 1992: The "Information Tapestry" project at Xerox PARC pioneers collaborative filtering (1992: The Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois Chicago creates a "CAVE" ("Cave Automatic Virtual Environment"), a surround-screen and surround-sound virtual-reality environment (graphics projected from behind the walls that surround the user) (1992: SAP launches R/3, moving its ERP system from mainframe to a three-tiered client-server architecture and to a relational database) 1992: Gary Becker of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 1992: Calgene creates the "Flavr Savr" tomato, the first genetically-engineered food to be sold in stores (1992: Jean Armour Polly coins the phrase "Surfing the Internet") (1992: Thomas Ray develops "Tierra", a computer simulation of ecology) (1992: (The first text message is sent from a phone) 1993: Stanford University's professor Jim Clark hires Mark Andreesen 1993: Condoleezza Rice becomes Stanford's youngest, first female and first non-white provost 1993: Thomas Siebel founds Siebel for customer relationship management (CRM) applications 1993: Steve Putz at Xerox's PARC creates the web mapping service Map Viewer 1993: The first "Other Minds Festival" for avantgarde music is held in San Francisco 1993: Broderbund introduces the videogame "Myst" 1993: Adobe Systems introduces Acrobat and the file format PDF (or Portable Document Format) (1993: Thad Starner pioneers wearable computing) 1993: Marc Andreessen develops the first browser for the World Wide Web (Mosaic) 1994: John Harsanyi of UC Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 1994: Nescape launches the Navigator browser 1994: Apple's digital camera Quicktake 100, that allows users to download the pictures to a computer via a USB cable (1994: Mark Pesce introduces the "Virtual Reality Modeling Language" or VRML) 1994: The "Band of Angels" is founded by "angels" to fund Silicon Valley startups (1994: University of North Carolina's college radio station WXYC becomes the first radio station in the world to broadcast its signal over the Internet) 1994: The search engine Architext (later Excite) debuts 1994: There are 315 public companies in Silicon Valley (1995: Vocaltec introduces the first "voice over IP" software) Jan 1995: Stanford student Jerry Yang founds Yahoo 1995: Salon is founded by David Talbot 1995: Steve Kirsch's Infoseek pioneers "cost-per-impression" and "cost-per-click" advertising 1995: Netscape, the company founded by Marc Andreesen, goes public even before earning money and starts the "dot.com" craze and the boom of the Nasdaq (1995: Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer and starts the browser wars) 1995: John Lasseter's "Toy Story" is the first feature-length computer-animated film (1995: The MP3 standard is introduced) 1995: Mario Botta builds the Modern Museum of Art in San Francisco 1995: Martin Perl of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1995: The Sony Playstation is introduced) (1995: Jacques Mattheij pioneers live video streaming over the Internet) 1995: Ward Cunningham creates WikiWikiWeb, the first "wiki", a manual on the internet maintained in a collaborative manner 1995: SUN launches the programming language Java 1995: Craig Newmark starts craigslist.com on the Internet, a regional advertising community (1995: Amazon.com is launched on the web as the "world's largest bookstore", except that it is not a bookstore, it is a website) 1995: The At Home Network (@Home) is founded by William Randolph Hearst III 1996: Sabeer Bhatia launches Hotmail, a website to check email from anywhere in the world (1996: Dell begin selling its computers via its website) (1996: Nokia introduces the first "smartphone") 1996: Steve Jobs rejoins Apple 1996: Jeff Hawkins invents the Palm Pilot, a personal digital assistant 1996: Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis establish the "Long Now Foundation" 1996: Douglas Osheroff of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1996: Macromedia introduces Flash (1996: The first DVD player is introduced by Toshiba) (1996: GeoSystems Global launches the web mapping service MapQuest that also provides address matching) (1996: The Apache HTTP Server is introduced, an open-source web server) (1996: Monsanto acquires Calgene 1996: Sydney Brenner founds the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley 1996: Brent Townshend invents the 56K modem (1997: Andrew Weinreich creates SixDegrees.com, the first social networking website) (1997: The Mars Pathfinder spacecraft broadcasts live images of Mars (1997: US West launches the first commercial DSL service in Phoenix) 1997: Reed Hastings founds Netflix to rent videos via the Internet 1997: The XML standard for exchanging documents on the World-Wide Web is introduced (1997: Myron Scholes of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 1997: Steven Chu of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1997: Evite is founded by Stanford engineering students Al Lieb and Selina Tobaccowala (1997: The total revenues for ERP software market is $7.2 billion, with SAP, Baan, Oracle, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft accounting for 62% of it) 1998: Stanford's scientist Mendel Rosenblum and others found Vmware 1998: TiVo is launched in San Francisco 1998: NuvoMedia introduces the Rocket eBook, a handheld device to read ebooks 1998: Netscape makes its browser Navigator available for free in january 1998. 1998: Chinese and Indian engineers run about 25% of Silicon Valley's high-tech businesses, accounting for $16.8 billion in sales and 58,000 jobs 1998: SoftBook Press releases the first e-book reader 1998: Saul Perlmutter's team at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab discovers that the expansion of the universe is accelerating 1998: Celera, presided by Craig Venter of "The Institute for Genomic Research" (TIGR), is established to map the human genome (and later relocated to the Bay Area) 1998: Netscape launches the open-source project "Mozilla" of Internet applications 1998: Robert Laughlin of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1998: America Online acquires Netscape 1998: Pierre Omidyar founds eBay, a website to auction items 1998: Two Stanford students, Larry Page and Russian-born Sergey Brin, launch the search engine Google 1998: Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and scores of Internet-related startups create overnight millionaires Dec 1998: Peter Thiel and Max Levchin found Confinity (1998: Jorn Barger in Ohio coins the term "weblog" for webpages that simply contain links to other webpages) (1998: Jim Gray creates the web mapping service TerraServer that also offers satellite images) (1998: Bob Somerby starts "The Daily Howler", the first major political blog) (1998: Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer opens Acer Technology Ventures to invest in Silicon Valley startups 1999: Between 1998 to 1999 venture capital investments in Silicon Valley firms increases more than 90% from $3.2 billion to $6.1 billion (1998: Steve Mann builds the first smartwatch) 1999: Google has 8 employees (1999: Total revenues for supply-chain software are $3.9 billion, with i2 owning 13% of the market) 1999: Siebel owns almost 50% of the CRM market 1999: Blogger.com allows people to create their own "blogs", or personal journals 1999: Marc Benioff founds Saleforce.com to move business applications to the Internet, pioneering cloud computing 1999: Philip Rosedale founds Linden Lab to develop virtual-reality hardware 1999: The world prepares for the new millennium amidst fears of computers glitches due to the change of date (Y2K) (1999: The recording industry sues Shawn Fanning's Napster, a website that allows people to exchange music) 1999: 100 new Internet companies are listed in the USA stock market 1999: The USA has 250 billionaires, and thousands of new millionaires are created in just one year (1999: Microsoft is worth 450 billion dollars, the most valued company in the world, even if it is many times smaller than General Motors, and Bill Gates is the world's richest man at $85 billion) 1999: At Home acquires Excite, the largest Internet-related merger yet (1999: A European consortium introduces the Bluetooth wireless standard invented by Ericsson) 1999: A panel on "Big Data" is held at the Visualization Conference in San Francisco (2000: Dell has the largest share of worldwide personal computer sales) (2000: Software and services account for 50% of IBM’s business) (2001: ZFN for genome editing) (2003: Skype is founded in Europe by Niklas Zennstroem and Janus Friis to offer voice over IP, a system invented by Estonian engineers) (2003: The first synthetic biology conference is held at MIT) (2004: Drew Endy of MIT founds Codon Devices to commercialize synthetic biology) (2005: Adrian Bowyer's RepRap for 3D printing) (2005: Sales of notebook computers account for 53% of the computer market) (2005: Total revenues of ERP software are $25.5 billion, with SAP making $10.5 billion and Oracle $5.1 billion) (2007: Knome introduces the first commercially available human genome sequencing) (2007: Safaricom launches the mobile payment system M-Pesa in Kenya) (2009: Satoshi Nakamoto introduces the digital currency Bitcoin) (2013: Microsoft buys Nokia's mobile-phone business) (2014: the first-ever non-fungible token is minted) (2019: The first 5G smartphones are introduced) (2020: TikTok has become the world's most downloaded app) (2021: Bitcoin's value peaks at almost $70,000) 2000: 10 billion e-mail messages a day are exchanged over the Internet 2000: 32% of Silicon Valley’s high-skilled workers are foreign-born, mostly from Asia 2000: Confinity and X.com merge to form Paypal, a system to pay online 2000: Daniel McFadden of UC Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 2000: The NASDAQ stock market crashes, wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth 2000: The government-funded Human Genome Project and the privately-funded Celera jointly announce that they have decoded the entire human genome 2000: There are 417 public companies in Silicon Valley 2000: Venture-capital investment in the US peaks at $99.72 billion or 1% of GDP, mostly to software (17.4%), telecommunications (15.4%), networking (10.0%) and media (9.1%) 2000: Victoria Hale, a former Genentech scientist, starts the first non-profit pharmaceutical company, the Institute for OneWorld Health 2001: Apple launches the iPod 2001: George Akerlof of UC Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 2001: Hewlett-Packard acquires Compaq 2001: Jimmy Wales founds Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by the Internet community 2001: Joseph Stiglitz of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 2001: KR Sridhar founds Bloom Energy to develop fuel-cell technology 2001: Listen.com launches Rhapsody, a service that provides streaming on-demand access to a library of digital music 2001: Nanosys is founded in 2001 to develop nanotechnology 2001: Semir Zeki founds the Institute of Neuroesthetics 2002: Bram Cohen unveils the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent 2002: Codexis is founded to develop biofuels 2002: Ebay acquires Paypal and Paypal cofounder Elon Musk founds SpaceX to develop space transportation 2002: Friendster is launched by Jonathan Abrams 2002: Sydney Brenner is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2003: Amyris Biotechnologies is founded to produce renewable fuels 2003: Christopher Voigt founds a lab at UCSF to program cells like robots to perform complex tasks 2003: Linden Lab launches “Second Life,” a virtual world accessible via the Internet 2003: Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning found Tesla to build electrical cars 2003: Matt Mullenweg launches a platform for people to create their own website or blog, Wordpress 2004: Google launches a project to digitize all the books ever printed 2004: Mark Zuckerberg founds the social networking service Facebook at Harvard University (soon relocated to Palo Alto) 2004: Mozilla releases the browser Firefox, created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross 2004: Oracle buys PeopleSoft 2004: UC Berkeley establishes a Center for New Media 2004: Vinod Khosla of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers founds Khosla Ventures to invest in green-technology companies 2005: 52.4% of Silicon Valley’s high-tech companies launched between 1995 and 2005 have been founded by at least one immigrant 2005: Adobe acquires Macromedia 2005: Andrew Ng at Stanford launches the STAIR project (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) 2005: Ebay acquires Skype 2005: Former Paypal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim launch YouTube 2005: Gina Bianchini founds Ning 2005: Google launches the web mapping system Google Earth that also offers three-dimensional images of terrain 2005: More than 50% of all jobs outsourced by Silicon Valley companies go to India 2005: Oracle acquires Siebel 2005: SUN’s founder Bill Joy joins venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to invest in green technology 2005: San Jose’s population of 912,332 has passed San Francisco, and San Jose is now the tenth largest city in the US 2005: Silicon Valley accounts for 14% of the world’s venture capital 2005: Solar-energy company Solyndra is founded 2005: The Letterman Digital Arts Center opens in San Francisco 2005: UCSF opens the “Institute for Human Genetics” 2005: Yahoo!, Google, America OnLine (AOL) and MSN (Microsoft’s Network) are the four big Internet portals with a combined audience of over one billion people worldwide 2006: Google acquires YouTube 2006: Jack Dorsey creates the social networking service Twitter 2006: Jay Keasling inaugurates the world’s first Synthetic Biology department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2006: Lyndon and Peter Rive found SolarCity 2006: Roger Kornberg of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Andrew Fire of Stanford University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2006: Scott Hassan founds Willow Garage to manufacturer robots for domestic use 2006: Tesla Motors introduces the Tesla Roadster, the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells 2006: The Bay Area is the largest high-tech center in the US with 386,000 high-tech jobs 2006: The World-Wide Web has 100 million websites 2006: The first Zer01 Festival is held in San Jose 2006: Walt Disney acquires Pixar 2006: YouTube is bought by Google for $1.65 billion 2007: 48% of Apple’s revenues come from sales of the iPod 2007: Apple launches the iPhone 2007: Forrester Research estimates that online retail sales in the US reached $175 billion 2007: The biotech company iPierian is founded to develop products based on cellular reprogramming 2007: The biotech company iZumi Bio is founded to develop products based on stem-cell research 2007: The world's largest vendors of personal computers are HP, Dell, Taiwan's Acer, China's Lenovo and Japan's Toshiba 2008: 20% of smartphones in the world use an operating system made in Silicon Valley (Symbian 47%, Blackberry 20%, Windows 12%) 2008: Airbnb is founded in San Francisco 2008: For a few months San Francisco issues marriage license to same-sex couples 2008: Hewlett-Packard purchases Electronic Data Systems in a shift towards services 2008: Microsoft Windows owns almost 90% of the operating system market for personal computers, while Google owns almost 70% of the Internet search market 2008: Taiwanese conglomerate Quanta invests into Silicon Valley startups Tilera and Canesta 2008: The Silicon Valley has 2.4 million (less than 1% of the U.S.’s population) generating more than 2% of the U.S.’s GDP, with a GDP per person of $83,000 2008: There are 261 public companies in Silicon Valley 2008: Venture capitalists invest $4 billion into green-tech startups in 2008, which is almost 40% of all US investments in high-tech 2009: BitTorrent accounts for at least 20% of all Internet traffic 2009: Elizabeth Blackburn of UCSF shares the Nobel prize in Medicine and Oliver Williamson of UC Berkeley shares the Nobel prize in Economics 2009: Facebook has 150 million users in January and grows by about one million users a day, the fastest product ever to reach that many users in five years 2009: Google’s market value is more than $140 billion 2009: Microsoft is the largest software company in the world with revenues of $50 billion, followed by IBM with $22 billion, Oracle with $17.5 billion, SAP with $11.6 billion, Nintendo with $7.2 billion, HP with $6.2 billion, Symantec with $5.6 billion, Activision Blizzard with $4.6 billion, Electronic Arts with $4.2 billion, Computer Associates with $3.9 billion, and Adobe with $3.3 billion. 2009: Oracle buys SUN 2009: President Barack Obama appoints Steve Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, to be Secretary of Energy 2009: Tesla Motors obtains a $465-million loan from the US government to build the Model S, a battery-powered sports sedan 2009: Thomas Siebel founds energy startup C3 LLC 2009: Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp launch the smartphone app Uber 2009: Xerox purchases Affiliated Computer Services in a shift towards services 2010: Apple introduces the tablet computer iPad that sells one million units in less than one month 2010: Apple is worth $205 billion, third in the US after Exxon and Microsoft 2010: Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith reprogram a bacterium's DNA 2010: Facebook has 500 million users 2010: Google is worth $180 billion 2010: HP purchases Palm, a struggling smartphone maker 2010: Microsoft’s IE has 59.9% of the browser market, followed by Firefox with 24.5% and Google Chrome with 6.7% 2010: SAP buys Sybase 2010: The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plans to simulate the nuclear fusion of a star (more than 100 million degrees Celsius, hotter than the center of the sun) with the world’s most powerful laser, called the National Ignition Facility 2010: The smarphone market grows 55% in 2010, with 269 million units sold worldwide 2010: The smartphone market grows 55% in 2010, with 269 million units sold worldwide 2010: YouTube broadcasts the Indian Premier League of cricket live worldwide 2011: Apple’s Siri 2012: Facebook goes public, the biggest high-tech IPO in history 2012: Pinterest becomes the third largest social network in the USA, surpassing LinkedIn and Tagged 2012: SpaceX launches the first commercial flight to the International Space Station 2012: The CRISPR-cas9 genome editing technique comes out of UC Berkeley and other labs 2013: 61.5% of traffic on the Web is not human 2013: 90% of the world's data have been created in the last two years 2013: 92% of smartphones in the world use an operating system made in Silicon Valley (Android 75%, iOS 17%, Windows 3%, Blackberry 3%, Symbian less than 1%) 2013: Worldwide sales of smartphones pass one billion units, while sales of personal computers decline by 9.8% 2014: Facebook acquires Oculus (virtual reality) 2014: Facebook has 1.3 billion members, Google owns 68% of the searches in the USA and more than 90% in Europe, Amazon owns more than 50% of the book market in the USA, LinkedIn has 300 million members, Alibaba controls 80% of e-commerce in China 2014: Google acquires DeepMind (artificial intelligence) 2014: Google acquires the British A.I. company DeepMind 2015: 224.3 million tablets are shipped in 2015, a decline of 8% from 2014 2015: Coinbase becomes the first-ever cryptocurrency unicorn 2015: There are 144 unicorns with a total value of $505 billion in the USA 2015: Discord launches 2015: Tesla introduces the AutoPilot 2015: There are 144 unicorns with a total value of $505 billion in the USA 2016: Boom of Deep Learning 2016: Elon Musk and Sam Altman of Y Combinator establish OpenAI 2016: For the first time more users around the world are accessing the internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers 2016: Google DeepMind's AlphaGo beats Go master Lee Se-dol 2016: Niantic and Nintendo introduce the augmented-reality game Pokemon Go 2016: SiFive is the first company to produce a RISC-V chip 2016: Tesla`s Gigafactory to produce battery cell opens in Nevada 2017: Google introduces the "transformer" model for Artificial Intelligence 2017: There are 128 "unicorns" in Silicon Valley (about three fourth of all unicorns in the world) 2018: Apple becomes the first company in the world to be value $1 trillion 2018: Google and OpenAI demonstrate the first language models, respectively BERT and GPT 2018: The controversy over the use by Russia’s hackers of US social media during the 2016 presidential election to spread "fake news" leads to intense scrutiny of Facebook and Twitter by the US Congress, while Google is being investigated by the European Union for breaking antitrust laws 2018: Uber's value hits $120 billion. Airbnb's $31 billion, Lyft's $15 billion and Pinterest's $12 billion 2019: Apple sells more watches than all the Swiss manufacturers combined 2019: Google claims that its quantum processor "Sycamore" achieved quantum supremacy 2019: Google's quantum computer Sycamore performs a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a traditional supercomputer more than 10,000 years 2019: Microsoft acquires the exclusive rights on OpenAI's technology 2019: The unicorn massacre (sinking IPOs like Uber's and Lyft's, and scuttled IPOs, like WeWork's) 2020: Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook post record profits amid the covid pandemic thanks to a boom of cloud computing, e-commerce and digital advertising 2020: Downloads of apps like Zoom and Skype increase dramatically during the Covid-19 epidemic as video conferencing and chats replace face-to-face meetings, and Zoom becomes the platform of choice for lectures 2020: Google's Waymo begins a fully driverless taxi service in Phoenix 2020: Nvidia acquires ARM from SoftBank 2020: OpenAI introduces the language model GPT3 2020: Six of the seven largest IPOs in the USA are from the Bay Area 2020: SpaceX takes two astronauts to the International Space Station, the first crewed spaceflight in nine years in the USA 2020: Tesla becomes the #1 car manufacturer in the world by market capitalization, worth more than General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Ford combined 2021: Apple unveiled laptops built around its own custom-designed processors M1 2021: China's Bytedance is the most valuable start-up in the world, followed by SpaceX, Stripe, Sweden's Klarna, Australia's Canva, Instacart and Databricks 2021: Facebook changes its name to Meta and focuses on the metaverse 2021: Google's AlphaFold solves the protein structure prediction problem for single protein chains 2021: OpenAI introduces the image generator DALL-E 2021: SpaceX is the most valuable start-up in the USA and Elon Musk the richest person in the world 2022: Apple becomes the first company to reach the $3tn valuation, higher than the GDP of Britain 2022: Both Meta/Facebook and Twitter, the two largest social media, lay off thousands of employees 2022: Elon Musk buys Twitter 2022: Nvidia is the world’s most valuable designer of semiconductors, with a market value of $468 billion 2022: OpenAI introduces the chatbot ChatGPT 2022: The USA enacts the "Chips and Science Act" to boost national semiconductor research 2023: Apple is the most valued company in the world, with a market cap of $2.54 trillion, 's followed by Microsoft ($2.09 trillion), Saudi Arabian Oil ($1.88 trillion), Alphabet ($1.35 trillion), and Amazon ($1.01 trillion) 2023: Silicon Valley Bank collapses, the biggest failure of a bank in the USA since the Great Recession 2023: Gordon Moore dies |
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