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1950s • 1960s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s

1970

PARC Established

Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was responsible for developing laser printing, the mouse and the graphical user interface. While the 3,000 mile buffer between it and Xerox headquarters in New York afforded scientists at the new lab great freedom to undertake their work, the distance also served as an impediment to persuade management of the promise of some of their greatest achievements.

1971

Intel announced the first "computer on a chip", later named the 4004 microprocessor.

Silicon Valley got its name when journalist, Don Hoefler of Electronic News, coined the term after the main ingredient in semiconductors.

1972

Atari Founded

In 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded an engineering firm, Syzygy Engineering, that designed and built the first arcade video game - Computer Space for Nutting Associates. A year later Bushnell founded Atari, Inc. in Sunnyvale and hired Al Alcorn as their first design engineer. To test Alcorn's abilities, Bushnell had him produce an arcade version of the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis game, which would be named Pong.

1973

Anchor-Electronics Founded

John Burgoon, a Lockheed engineer, started Anchor-Electronics in Santa Clara to cater to the needs of the burgeoning tech industry. The ensuing years have seen regular expansion of the inventory and showroom space, keeping pace with the diverse needs of the area's prototyping engineers, students and hobbyists.

Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet, local area networking technology, at Xerox PARC.

1975

IMSAI 8080 Launched

IMS Associates of San Leandro shipped the first IMSAI 8080 kits on December 16, 1975. It became one of the earliest successes in personal computing, with almost 20,000 units produced. The IMSAI 8080's chassis had a capacity for up to 22 boards, and supported up to 64K of 500-nonsecond memory. One of the IMS Associate's subsidiaries was the ill-fated ComputerLand.

Nortel began manufacturing the world's first fully digital PBX in Mountain View and opened a research and development facility in Palo Alto.

1976

Apple Established

Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. The original Apples were hand-built by Wozniak in Job's garage and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips) — less than what is today considered a complete personal computer — and was priced at $666.66.

1977

Oracle's Origins

Software Development Laboratories (SDL) was incorporated in Redwood Shores by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates. In 1979 its name was changed to Relational Software Inc. (RSI) and relocated to Menlo Park. Finally, in 1983, RSI took the name "Oracle" in order to align more closely with its primary product. The name Oracle came from the code name of a CIA project which the founders had all worked on while at the Ampex Corporation.

1979

3Com Founded

3Com Corporation was founded by Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, the most pervasive networking technology worldwide. By 1997 3Com had become a $5.6 billion company.