The Innovators

Description

Silicon Valley Innovators has been a recent hot topic because of the contributions Companies, R&D Centers and Universities have made to advance technology. However, we must also remember that much of the early development occurred in Tech Hubs on the East Coast such a IBM in New York, DEC in Maynard, MA (along the famous Route 128), Control Data (Minneapolis) and Bell Labs in New Jersey. The development coming from this Tech Hub have changed our life's and lifestyle. Some for good, others more nefarious.

A confluence of people, Universities and entrepreneurial drive have made Silicon Valley (which includes essentially the entire West Coast and Austin, TX) have wrought a world wide change that has not been seen since the late Industrial Revolution.

Who are these people? What were their Visions? What makes a region so successful? Will it continue? All good topics for discussion since they have impacted us so significantly.

As part of the above question we should ask why the US is good at early development but manufacturing and further advancement are made in Asia?

Weekly Topics

  1. Timeline of major discoveries and what is missing from the list.

  2. Ada, Countess of Lovelace nee Byron.

  3. The Computer - Early Development and the final ingredient.

  4. Programming - From Ada, Turing and the many early women programmers to Microsoft and Apple.

  5. The Transistor - Bell Labs and Fairchild.

  6. The Microchip - Fairchild to Intel and TI.

  7. Video Games - Early start in the US but what about Japan and Korea?

  8. The Personal Computer - From Altair to IBM and DEC to HP, Xerox and Apple.

  9. Software - From DOS to Windows and in-between.

  10. On-Line - The Modem and the the AOL Free floppy disc or CD.

  11. The Web - From Defense and Education to general use.

  12. Ada Forever - Conclusion and future?

Bibliography