The secret history of Silicon Valley & the defense industry

The Secret History of Silicon Valley

This is a very long GoogleTechTalks video.  But, if you are interested in “black projects” related to  radio, electronics, radar, electronic counter-measures, signal intelligence, and electronic intelligence in the context of World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War and lots of information about Stanford’s participation in classified military projects – this may be worth the watch.

If you are in to it, this is a fascinating history of military/university collaboration on black projects and the symbiotic relationship among University Engineering schools, the defense industry, and how all this gave rise to entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and the founding of well-known companies.

Get a cup of coffee, and take a watch…  (don’t foget to check out the list of references in the Resource section below)

Resources:

See below for the list sources for the above GoogleTechTalk

Sources I used for The Secret History of Silicon Valley.  Thanks to the authors of this wonderful material.  Special note; read everything Alfred Price has written for WWII and Electronic Warfare.  Steuart Leslie, Charles Lecuyer and Rebecca S. Lowen for Stanford and the Cold War.

World War II Sources – Books

• Scientists Against Time – James Baxter
• Tuxedo Park – Jennet Conant
• A Radar History of WWII – Louis Brown
• Confounding the Reich – Martin Bowman
• Confound and Destroy – Martin Streetly
• Echoes of War, the Story of H2S Radar – Sir Bernard Lovell
• Boffin: A Personal Story of the Early Days of Radar, Radio Astronomy and Quantum Optics – R. Hanbury Brown
• Radar Development to 1945 – Russell Burns
• The Invention that Changed the World – Robert Buderi
• Wizard War, British Scientific Intelligence – R.V. Jones
• History of Air Intercept Radar and British Nightfighter – Ian White
• The Luftwaffe Over Germany: Defense of the Reich – Donald Caldwell
• Battle Over The Reich: The Strategic Bomber Offensive Over Germany: Volume One, 1939-1943 – Alfred Price
• Battle Over the Reich: The Strategic Bomber Offensive against Germany Volume 2 Nov 1943-May 1945 – Alfred Price
• Japanese Radar and Related Weapons of World War II – Yasuzo Nakagawa
• Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare – Alfred Price
• Volume I: The History of US. Electronic Warfare to 1946 – Alfred Price

Cold War Sources — Books

• Volume II: The History of US. Electronic Warfare: Renaissance Years – Alfred Price
• Volume III: The History of US. Electronic Warfare: Rolling Thunder Through Allied Force, 1964 to 2000 – Alfred Price
• Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret NSA – James Bamford
• The Puzzle Palace: Inside the NSA – James Bamford
• Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security – William Burrows
• Secrets of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War and Beyond – M. Aid, C. Wiebes
• Eternal Vigilance? 50 Years of the CIA– J. Jones, R. Jones, C. Andrew
• High-Cold-War-Strategic Air Reconnaissance and the Electronic Intelligence War – Robert Jackson
• Spy Flights of the Cold War – Paul Lashmar
• By Any Means Necessary: America’s Secret Air War in the Cold War – W. Burrows
• Shadow Flights: America’s Secret Airwar Against the Soviet Union: A Cold War History – C. Peebles
• The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology -Jeffery Richelson
• Spyplane The U-2 History – Norman Polmar
• Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites – Dwayne Day
• Corona: America’s First Satellite Program – Kevin Ruffner
• Corona Between the Sun and the Earth: The First NRO Reconnaissance Eye in Space – Robert McDonald
• Trust but Verify: Imagery Analysis in the Cold War – David Lindgren
• Spy Capitalism: Itek and the CIA – Jonathan Lewis
• America’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security – Jeffery Richelson
• Shades of Gray: National Security and the Evolution of Space Reconnaissance – L. Parker Temple
• Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance – Donald MacKenzie
• From Polaris to Trident – The Development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology – Graham Spinardi
• When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the U.S. Navy – David Boslaugh
• A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon – Neal Sheehan
• Titan II: A History of a Cold War Missile Program – David Stumpf
• The Kremlins’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945-2000 – Steven Zaloga
• Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces – Pavel Podvig, Frank von Hippel
• The Eleven Days of Christmas: America’s Last Vietnam Battle – Marshall Michel
• Flying From the Black Hole – Robert Harder
• SA-2 (S-75) Surface to Air Missile Simulator
• The Archangel and the OXCART: the Lockheed A-12 – J. Remak, J. Ventolo
• From Rainbow to Gusto: Stealth and the Design of the Lockheed Blackbird – Paul Suhler
• Radar Handbook – Merrill I. Skolnik
• EW 101: a first course in electronic warfare – David Adamy
• First in Last Out: Stories by the Wild Weasels
• Threat Warning for Tactical Aircraft: A Technical History
• Beyond Expectations: Recollections of the Pioneers and Founders of National Reconnaissance

Silicon Valley Sources – Books

Terman/Shockley/Intel/National

• Fred Terman at Stanford – Stewart Gilmore
• IEEE Oral History – Fred Terman Associates
• Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley– Joel Shurkin
• The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce – Leslie Berlin
• Spinoff: A Personal History of the Industry That Changed The World – Charles Sporck

Silicon Valley History

• Electronics in the West: the First Fifty Years – Jane Morgan
• The Origins of the Electronics Industry on the Pacific Coast– Arthur Norberg
• Revolution in Miniature: The History and Impact of Semiconductor Electronics
• Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford – Rebecca S. Lowen
• The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America – Paul Edwards
• From Whirlwind to MITRE: The R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer – Kent Redmond, Thomas Smith
• Understanding Silicon Valley – Martin Kenney
• How Silicon Valley Came to Be – Timothy Sturgeon
• The Inventor and the Pilot: Russell and Sigurd Varian –  Dorothy Varian
• The Tube Guys – Norman Pond
• The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford – Stuart W. Leslie
• Making Silicon Valley: Innovation & the Growth of High Tech –  Charles Lecuyer
• Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 – AnnaLee Saxenian
• The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy – AnnaLee Saxenian
• Bill and Dave:  How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company

Venture Capital

• Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital – Spencer E. Ante
• Done Deals: Venture Capitalists Tell Their Stories -Udayan Gupta
• Semiconductor Timeline to 1976: Semi and Don C.

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