Sixty years ago, this month, start-up Fairchild Semiconductor of Mountain View, CA, introduced the first practical integrated electronic microcircuit to a gathering of press and industry insiders at the 1961 IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) Convention in New York. Popularly known today as a computer chip, Fairchild’s announcement echoed far beyond the plush ballroom of the St Moritz Hotel (today the Ritz Carlton) overlooking Central Park.

Under the title “In Tiny Devices a Revolution,” a photo in LIFE magazine compared Fairchild’s new chip to the size of the letter “D” on a dime. It said “their job is to switch…

With the past year’s rise of remote work and exodus from the Bay Area to cheaper cities, many people have wrung their hands about whether or not Silicon Valley is dead. The truth is that Silicon Valley has gone through many eras of boom and bust over the decades and has bounced back after each of them. The work may be more distributed, but the heart of Silicon Valley is still beating.

Over the past decade or so, we’ve gotten used to new tech startup founders hyping bold promises that they’ll change the world. But none have had the same…

“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary …”

Story by David A. Laws

The soft Irish brogue and insistent click, click, click of rosary beads from the seat behind me steadily increased in volume and intensity as our British European Airways (BEA) commuter flight from Belfast, Northern Ireland circled over London. For distraction, I searched for familiar landmarks along the River Thames. Through low, scudding clouds, I glimpsed the pagoda and glistening glasshouses of Kew Gardens tucked into a great curve of the river directly under the flight path to Heathrow.

I’m typically…

By David Laws

“What’s in a name?” — Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare

Fifty years ago, long before the advent of Facebook, Google, or the later reincarnation of Apple, a front-page article in the tech-industry’s leading newspaper, Electronic News, introduced a new nickname for a cluster of sleepy agricultural communities near San Jose, California. [1] Known nationwide as the “Valley of Hearts Delight” for its bountiful orchards, the Santa Clara Valley would henceforth be known as “Silicon Valley” after a key material used in semiconductor manufacturing, a booming new industry of the area.

As the fleshpots of San Francisco 60…

“So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay” — Robert Frost

I pulled my jacket close against the chill stirring of an early breeze. A heavy silence enveloped the world in the final, darkest minutes before dawn. To the east, a gray sliver of pending morning peeked from beneath bands of straggling clouds to silhouette the rugged crest of the Temblor Range. …

The dusty pick-up truck pulls up at a ranch gate in rural south Monterey County, California. Against a backdrop of dry, rolling, oak-savanna foothills, three generations of hunters and their dogs wait for the driver to join them. Soaring on the first thermal uplifts of the morning, shadowy silhouettes of turkey vultures circle silently overhead. Their wavering flight pattern signals a quest for food as their extraordinary sense of smell seeks carrion for the first meal of the day.

Mike Stake, senior wildlife biologist with the Ventana Wildlife Society (VWS), reaches into the back of his truck to retrieve packages…

“I see little difference in magic and science, except to have the opinion that magic is one step ahead of science” — Sybil Leak

For most of us, dragons, ghosts, and witches raise goosebumps but once a year. For the citizens of Burley, deep in the woods of England’s New Forest National Park, every night must feel like Halloween.

The hamlet of Burley is far from an undiscovered tourist gem. Quaint tearooms and souvenir stores straddling its winding, one-block main street bustle by day. …

“Bruton is the only spot in the world I have refused to see again since John died.” — Elaine Steinbeck (1992)

Elaine Steinbeck’s comment in a 1992 letter to artist Betty Guy refers to the time that she and her husband, Nobel-prizewinning writer John Steinbeck, spent at Discove Cottage in Bruton, Somerset, England while he worked on his “reduction of Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur to simple readable prose without adding or taking away anything.”

Steinbeck became fascinated with the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table after his Aunt Molly Martin presented him with a child’s version of the…