A Rare Mix Created Silicon Valley’s Startup Culture
When Facebook goes public later this spring, its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, will be following in the footsteps of a long line of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs that includes Steve Jobs and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But there was a time when the idea of an engineer or scientist starting his or her own company was rare.
In 1956, what is now called Silicon Valley was called the Valley of the Heart’s Delight. Its rolling hills were covered with farms and orchards. To become Silicon Valley it needed four ingredients: the first, brilliant scientists.
Collecting Scientific Talent
William Shockley was certainly brilliant, says Leslie Berlin, a historian and archivist at Stanford University.
“People tend to collectively agree,” she says, that “[Shockley] was one of the smartest people to walk about this valley for quite a long time.”
In 1956, Shockley won the Nobel Prize for co-inventing the transistor. His next dream was to make transistors out of silicon; he decided to set up his lab in Mountain View — near Palo Alto — largely for personal reasons.
“He’d grown up in Palo Alto,” Berlin says. Most importantly, she says, “his mother was still living in Palo Alto.”
Of course, it helped that nearby Stanford University was also doing federally funded electronics research. Shockley was a magnet who drew more brilliant scientists to the valley. Among them was Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and the man who would come up with Moore’s Law — the observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years.
Please click here to continue reading the original article by Laura Sydell at NPR.
thedailyfeed: These piping hot pictures cost photographer Miles Morgan a tripod and pair of shoes, and almost turned him to toast when he came within a foot to capture lava reaching the sea from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii.
From the Sun’s superhuman strength to leaving a permanent mark on the Moon, fascinating facts about space:
- Despite its serene appearance when viewed from Earth, the energy produced from the Sun is so strong that every second its core releases the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs.
- The next time you’re cloud watching, ponder this: by studying the skies, you are essentially staring into history. Why? The light you presently enjoy travels from distant stars and galaxies takes hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of years to reach us.
- While Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, its temperatures can reach a biting -280 degrees Fahrenheit as Mercury lacks the atmospheric pressure necessary to trap heat. Venus, on the other hand, has a thick atmosphere to trap heat and is markedly hotter than Mercury, despite being farther away from the sun.
- If you are ever lucky or wealthy enough to gallivant to the moon, you can expect your presence to remain much longer than anticipated. As there is no air or wind on the moon, your footprints are likely to last forever (barring a meteoric collision, of course).
Marvin Gaye was born on April 2nd, 1939.
(Source: elizabethkarlsson.wordpress.com)
Astrophotography in the National Parks
All photos by Tyler Nordgren
Original Article Source: Sky & Telescope
(Source: elizabethkarlsson.wordpress.com)
Prometheus is an upcoming science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. The film stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron. The plot follows the crew of the spaceship Prometheus in the year 2085, as they explore an advanced alien civilization in search of the origins of humanity.
Conceived as a prequel to Scott’s 1979 science fiction horror film Alien, rewrites of Spaihts’ script by Lindelof developed a separate story that precedes the events of Alien, but which is not directly connected to the films in the Alien franchise. According to Scott, though the film shares “strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak”, and takes place in the same universe, Prometheus will explore its own mythology and ideas. Principal photography began in March 2011, with filming taking place in England, Iceland, and Spain. Prometheus is scheduled for release between May 30 and June 8, 2012 in various territories through 20th Century Fox.
(Source: elizabethkarlsson.wordpress.com)
Kate’s Irish charm: An emerald Duchess presents St Patrick’s Day shamrocks to guardsmen (and she’s a knockout for one soldier)
The Duchess of Cambridge looked radiant today as she presented soldiers with shamrocks to mark St Patrick’s Day. Kate wore an elegant green dress coat with a chocolate brown hat and an Irish Guards brooch that belonged to the Queen Mother as she attended the traditional parade in Aldershot.
But the excitement was all too much for one young soldier, who fainted to the ground in his stiff red uniform.
The Duchess watched the ceremonial military parade with a dazzling smile before bestowing lucky three-leafed clovers on 40 officers - and even their Irish Wolfhound mascot. She glowed in her Emilia Wickstead dress and Lock & Co hat on her first solo military engagement, at the start of what will be a long-standing relationship with the Irish Guards.
Please click here to continue reading the original article by Emma Reynolds at Daily Mail.
