At 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View, California, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory manufactured the first silicon devices in what became known as Silicon Valley and helped launch the region's silicon electronics industry. Founded in 1955 as a division of Beckman Instruments through a partnership between William Shockley and Arnold O. Beckman, the laboratory opened at this site in 1956 to pursue silicon device research at a time when the semiconductor industry was concentrated on the East Coast and in Texas. Shockley, who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain for transistor-related breakthroughs, recruited a talented group of young scientists and engineers from across the United States and beyond. At this site, Shockley's four-layer diode was developed, Silicon Valley's first silicon transistors were made, and new silicon processing technologies were advanced. Although Shockley was a brilliant researcher, his management and his emphasis on the four-layer diode over the silicon transistor proved unpopular with his staff. In 1957, a group of leading employees left and founded Fairchild Semiconductor in nearby Palo Alto, where they soon brought an advanced silicon transistor to market. Hundreds of electronics and computing firms in the region can trace their origins to Shockley Semiconductor, and the creative talent, hard work, and financial incentives that gathered around this technology gave the area the name Silicon Valley.
