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Published on 07/13/1998 All articles from this issue

Mountain View home to Silicon Valley birth site

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By Carol Tiegs

Special to the Town Crier

Symbolic of change in what was once the Valley of the Heart's Delight, a former apricot barn in Mountain View may be honored as a birthplace of the Silicon Valley.

Retired engineer Jacques Beaudouin has lobbied Mountain View officials for 11 years to recognize the laboratory where William Shockley, winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics as a co-inventor of the transistor, worked to grow silicon crystals. The building at 391 San Antonio Road is where the now-fabled traitorous eight broke with Shockley over his vision for developing the silicon transistor, to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Fairchild developed the first commercially viable integrated circuit, the basis of today's computer and electronics industry.

Beaudouin first meet Shockley in 1960. "I knew he was here and I wanted to meet him," Beaudouin said. "I was not looking for a job. Actually I was ski bumming at the time. I had many friends on the French ski team and I was waiting for them to arrive for the Olympics in Squaw Valley."

But Shockley offered Beaudouin a job. Beaudouin debated - he really wanted to see the Olympics. "I thought to myself, hundreds of people want to work for him," he said. Beaudouin took the job and raced to Squaw Valley on weekends.

"(Shockley) interviewed people not on what they knew or had done, but on how they thought," said Beaudouin, whose own first conversation with Shockley was about mathematical puzzles.

Beaudouin worked for Shockley until 1968, when Shockley's firm was sold for a second time. The two were reunited at Stanford University, where Shockley taught electrical engineering and Beaudouin eventually became chief engineer at the Center for Integrated Systems. They also enjoyed sailing together.

Beaudouin first began lobbying Mountain View officials to recognize Shockley's laboratory site in 1987 as the city prepared to celebrate its 85th anniversary. Recently a group of former Shockley labs employees met in Palo Alto as part of the Electrochemical Society's salute to the 50th anniversary of the transistor and urged Beaudouin to write one more letter to the city. This time, Beaudouin said, City Manager Kevin Duggan agreed to put historic designation for the site on the council's agenda. A decision is expected this fall.

Today Shockley's San Antonio Road laboratory is the new home of Comfort Technologies and Soma Ergonomics. Founded in 1991 by architect/designer Carl Zdenek and a team of industry veterans, Soma manufactures ergonomic seating, keyboard platforms and computer accessories designed to address the core causes of repetitive strain injuries. Comfort Technologies offers one-stop shopping for comfort furniture and accessories for work and sleep.

Zdenek said he only learned of the building's history by accident in March. As an architect, he was first struck by seeing the arched wood panels that had been hidden for years behind dropped ceiling installed when the old lab became a stereo store.

Judy Bruzus, Soma's vice president for sales and marketing, said they were "thrilled" to learn the building's history.

"We'd love to support (Beaudouin's) mission in recognizing the birthplace of Silicon Valley," she said. "In a sense, without Shockley there wouldn't be this store."

Zdenek sees a movement from the Information Age, that grew from Shockley's initial research, into what he calls a "conscious processing age" where people seek to make the best use of information. Soma, for example, now uses computer technology to solve some of the problems which that technology created.

Soma has restored a warm glow to the wooden beams of the apricot barn turned technology lab turned ergonomic center.

"The building was not quite as clean" in the 1960s, Beaudouin recalled.