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The HP Garage at 367 Addison Avenue is now designated an official California Historical Landmark, and is marked with a plaque calling it the "Birthplace of 'Silicon Valley'".
The company won its first big contract in 1938 to provide the HP 200A, a low distortion frequency oscillator for Walt Disney's production of the animated film Fantasia, which allowed Hewlett and Packard to formally establish the Hewlett-Packard Company on July 2, 1939.
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—Wikipedia
Curiously I thought it was earlier!
Semiconductors existed before Shockley demonstrated the transistor in 1947 in Bell Labs, and Westinghouse France had one about the same time, but those were Germanium.
The MOSFET was silicon and 1959, though the idea was proposed in the 1920s and again in 1930s. An early expert was killed in WWII, maybe the siege of Leningrad? Materials were not pure enough!
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The first working silicon transistor was developed at Bell Labs on January 26, 1954, by Morris Tanenbaum. The first production commercial silicon transistor was announced by Texas Instruments in May 1954. This was the work of Gordon Teal, an expert in growing crystals of high purity
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It was purely materials that held it back.
I started learning Electronics in 1966. I never heard the term "Silicon Valley" before 1970s.
The term was in wide use before 1980.
Texas Instruments was called Geophysical Service Incorporated from 1930 to 1951. They were based in Dallas, Texas.
So there was no "Silicon Valley" till after the mid 1950s and likely the term grew in the 1970s. But Tech companies in the area from 1930s and more so from 1960s.
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Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley.
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, if set in 2021, (takes time to write & publish) then born in 1954 and likely career starts about 20+ (older if Masters), so 1974. But "Silicon Valley" as term is likely 4 to 6 years old and Silicon production is 20 years old in 1974.
If 67 in 2023 and did a Masters, then he's 25 years late to the Silicon party and maybe 10 years after "Silicon valley" became a common term. I was soldering ICs, never mind silicon transistors in late 1960s.
IBM is a Victorian company. Hollerith Business Systems or something. RCA (demise 1986?) was a Victorian company. Honeywell founded 1906.
Philips spun off their semiconductors as NXP, and started Electronics about 1926, before that light bulbs.
Motorola started in 1930s with record players in cars, then valve (tube) radios.
UK Pye Electronics, taken over by Philips in 1967 was a Victorian company.
Eveready/NCC/Energiser was Victorian era.
You'd need to be in your 90s now to have had any significant career at the start of the Transistor era and all the pioneers of the electronic circuits, all first used with tubes/valves, are probably dead.