Stanford University HISTORY 262S: Science and Technology in the Silicon Valley 1930-2000 - Syllabus Winter 2005

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History 262S SCIENCE AND HIGH TECHNOLOGY IN THE SILICON VALLEY, 1930-2000 Stanford University Winter 2005 Wednesday 3:15-6:05 p.m. Wallenberg Hall, Room 120   Instructor: Yorgos Panzaris Office:  Building 200, Room 25 Email: yorgos@stanford.edu Office Hours: Tuesday 2-4 and by appointment   The aim of this course is to explore the technological, political, economic and spatial dimensions of the rise of Silicon Valley from the 1930s through the late 1990s. Like Manchester and Birmingham, England, during the First Industrial Revolution; Menlo Park, New Jersey, or River Rouge, Michigan of the Second Industrial Revolution, Silicon Valley has been mythologized as one of the birthplaces of high-tech manufacturing in the Information Age and one of the centers of technological innovation and rapid economic growth in the late 20th century. A topic of concern has been to identify the technological, scientific, organizational, and managerial factors in the rise of Silicon Valley, and the political circumstances and cultural conditions that have sustained its development. A salient question for historians and other social scientists is whether the “Silicon Valley phenomenon” is unique or whether it can be replicated elsewhere.   The readings and discussions in the course are organized into three topic clusters:   ·         The first cluster will cover historical themes related to the early history of the West Coast electronics industry and the purported role of Stanford in the emergence of Silicon Valley. ·         The second cluster will pursue the role of the military and government funding for microelectronics, the relative role of commercial concerns, and the importance of the counterculture in the computer revolution. ·         A third cluster of topics will treat models from the fields of economics of science and technology, organization and management, and regional geography that should prove useful for framing research in the history of high technology.     We will be focusing on several key technological/scientific developments, roughly demarcating the four cycles of growth in the history of the region – radio tubes and microwave devices (e.g. the klystron tube) in the 1930s, semiconductors in the 1960s, personal computers in the 1980s, Internet and biomedical technologies in the 1990s. We aim to approach the history of Silicon Valley comparatively, by juxtaposing its development with other high technology regions, such as Route 128 in the Boston area. We will also explore the relationship between university research at Stanford, government-sponsored research at installations such as SLAC, research organizations such as SRI, and private R&D organizations at firms such as Varian Associates, Hewlett-Packard, Syntex, and Xerox PARC.   The colloquium will combine online and classroom discussion of materials, and feature a number of interesting guest participants (see schedule below). Prof. Tim Lenoir, who has worked extensively on the history of Silicon Valley and has taught this course in previous years, will participate in select sessions via videoconferencing from Duke University.      Important Notice: 262S does not satisfy the WIM requirement for undergraduates.     REQUIREMENTS   Students are expected to:   a.         Actively participate in class discussion and the online forum. The colloquium’s success largely depends on participants’ intellectual engagement with the material and their fellow students. b.         Lead class discussion in one of our classroom sessions (individually, or in groups of two, depending on class size). c.         Complete a final project: a 15-20-page paper, a web site, or a multimedia project on a topic of their choice. Students are expected to work individually, but groups of two will be accepted, provided the scope of the project justifies it.       COURSE MATERIALS   The following books, available at the Stanford bookstore (also in online versions on the class website):   1.         Paul Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988) 2.         Robert Buderi, Engines of Tomorrow: How the World’s Best Companies Are Using Their Research Labs to Win the Future (Simon & Schuster, 2000). 3.         David A. Kaplan, The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams (Harper Perennial Library, 2000). 4.         Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999). 5.         Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, 2nd edition (McGraw-Hill, 1999). 6.         Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, The Sloan Technology Series (Harper Collins, 1997). 7.         Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (Harper Business, 2000).   COURSE SCHEDULE  (all readings available on class website)     1/5       Course Introduction: Silicon Valley Boomtown               Watch Silicon Valley Boomtown film in class.     1/12     The Habitat of High Technology Regions   William F. Miller, The "Habitat" for Entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley Network Project (Stanford: July, 2002). Nathan Rosenberg and Richard Nelson, “The Roles of Universities in the Advance of Industrial Technology,” Research Policy 23 (1994). David A. Kaplan, “Chapter II: Genesis” The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams (Harper Perennial: New York, 2000), 28-53. Stuart W. Leslie and Bruce Hevly, “Steeple Building at Stanford: Electrical Engineering, Physics, Microwave Research” in Proceedings of the IEEE 73 (July 1985): 1168-1180. Henry Lowood, From Steeples of Excellence to Silicon Valley (Varian Associates: 1989).     1/19     The Role of the Government and Military   Stuart W. Leslie, “Materiel Science,” The Cold War and American Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 212-232. Stuart W. Leslie, “Pentagon West,” The Cold War and American Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 241-256. Paul N. Edwards, “Chapter 3: SAGE,” The Closed World: Computers and Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996). Steven Usselman, “IBM and Its Imitators: Organizational Capabilities and the Emergence of the International Computer Industry,” Business and Economic History, 22 (Winter 1993): 1-35. Thomas Hughes, et al. “The Organization of Federal Support: A Historical review,” Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research (Washington, DC: National Acaemy Press, 1999): 88-135.     1/26     Transistors, Integrated Circuits, and Microprocessors (Guest: Leslie Berlin)    Leslie Berlin, “Robert Noyce and Fairchild Semiconductor, 1957-1968,” Business History Review 75 (Spring 2001): 63-101. Thomas Misa, “Military Needs, Commerical Realities, and the Development of the Transistor, 1948-1958,” in Merrit Roe Smith (ed.) Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Persopectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985), 253-287. Paul E. Ceruzzi, “Chapter 7: The Personal Computer, 1972-1977,” A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998), 177-189. David A. Kaplan, “Chapter III: Belief,” The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams (Harper Perennial: New York, 2000), 55-77. Christophe Lecuyer, “Revolution in Silicon,” Technology and Culture (in press). Christophe Lecuyer, “Silicon for Industry: Component Design, Mass Production, and the Move to Commercialize Markets at Fairchild Semiconductor, 1960-1967,” History and Technology 16 (1999): 179-216. Tom Wolfe, “The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on the Silicon Valley,” Esquire Magazine (December 1983): 346-374.     2/2       East Coast Computing, West Coast Visions: DEC, DARPA and PARC             (Guest: Robert Taylor)   Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (Cambrigde, Mass: MIT Press), Chapters 4, 6. Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: Harper, 1999), Chapters 1-8, 10, 12, 14, 15. Douglas Engelbart, “Augmenting Human Intellect.”     2/9       Vision to Reality: Commercializing the PC             (Guests: Howard Rheingold, TBA)   Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (Cambrigde, Mass: MIT Press), Chapters 7,8. Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: Harper, 1999), Chapters 21-26, Epilogue. David A. Kaplan, The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams (Harper Perennial: New York, 2000), Chapters 4, 5.             2/16     Open Culture, Open Systems: Workstations and Regional Geography             (Guest: Margaret O’ Mara)   Margaret P. O’Mara, Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Politics, Universities, and the Roots of the Information Age Metropolis (Princeton University Press, 2004), Chapters 3, 5.  Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Cullture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1994). Annalee Saxenian, Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs (San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 1999). Paul E. Ceruzzi, “Chapter 9: Workstations, UNIX and the Net, 1981-1995”, A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998), 281-306. Amar Bhide, Vinod Khosla and Sun Microsystems (Harvard Case Study in Business History, 1989).               2/23     The Region and the Organization of Research             Stuart Leslie, Robert Kargon, and Erica Schoenberger, “Far Beyond Big Science: Science Regions and the Organization of Research and Development,” in Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (eds.) Big Science: the Growth of Large Scale Research (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 334-354. Robert Buderi, “The New Pioneers: Intel and Microsoft,” Engines of Tomorrow: How the World’s Best Companies Are Using Their Research Labs to Win the Future (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 325-367. Najendra M. Victor and Jessie H. Ausubel, “DRAMs as Model Organisms for the Study of Technological Evolution,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2002).     3/2       Venture Capitalists and Start-Up Fever; The Dot-Com Bubble             (Guest: Martin Kenney)   Martin Kenney and Richard Florida, “Venture Capital in Silicon Valley: Fueling New Firm Formation,” Martin Kenney, ed., Understanding Silicon Valley: Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). David A. Kaplan, The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams (Harper Perennial: New York, 2000), Chapters 6, 7, 10.     3/9       Wrap-Up Session             (Guest: TBA)               No readings; work on Final Project.     3/12     FINAL PROJECT DUE

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