> TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the later capitalistic growth phase.
I agree with this with the caveat that the big beneficiary of this largesse in the wartime and postwar region was inside Route 128 in Boston; Silicon Valley really started taking off in the mid-late 70s. This is actually reflected in the timeline (though its parentheicization is buggy).
The then primacy of the greater Boston area is not a complete accident: Both FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, and the head of the wartime NDRC were born and educated in Boston (both MIT grads; Conent was president of Harvard). As the article points out, the major SV academic institutions Stanford and UCB were still considered second tier at that time (despite UCB's atomic work and Stanford's having already produced a US president).
It is all mentioned and explained in the video I linked though. Those Boston developments were not in isolation, what happened there impacted what happened in SV.
I agree with this with the caveat that the big beneficiary of this largesse in the wartime and postwar region was inside Route 128 in Boston; Silicon Valley really started taking off in the mid-late 70s. This is actually reflected in the timeline (though its parentheicization is buggy).
The then primacy of the greater Boston area is not a complete accident: Both FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, and the head of the wartime NDRC were born and educated in Boston (both MIT grads; Conent was president of Harvard). As the article points out, the major SV academic institutions Stanford and UCB were still considered second tier at that time (despite UCB's atomic work and Stanford's having already produced a US president).