THE GARAGE WHERE SILICON VALLEY BEGAN
By Christopher DeMuth
The 1960s and 1970s were decades of busy, bossy, Washington-centered government: Great Society programs. Wage-and-price controls. New national departments of Education and Energy. New agencies regulating health, safety, environmental quality, civil rights, and much else.
Most of those initiatives fell radically short of their promises, and many of them made matters worse.
As federal spending surged, the United States experienced “stagflation,” combining high inflation and high unemployment. By 1980 the “misery index” topped 20 percent—13.5 percent inflation plus 7.2 percent unemployment.
Even in the face of these impositions, the economy chugged along respectably. Gross Domestic Product doubled between 1960 and 1980, averaging 3.6 percent growth annually despite four recessions.
A critical driver was new-and-improved technology. Commercial jet airline service appeared in the early 1960s, speeding business and personal travel. The price of a five-minute coast-to-coast telephone call, measured in today’s dollars, fell from about $40 in 1960 to $2 in 1980.
But technology, to achieve its promise in full, required skilled technologists with a spirit of enterprise and a taste for adventure. These it found in California’s Santa Clara County, which would soon be known as Silicon Valley.