Everyone knows about Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and numerous other high-tech companies that represent what we think of as "Silicon Valley", but it wasn't always that way. There is a whole history of the valley that isn't often told. This book attempts to put it all into perspective and shows that at one time you didn't have to be a computer scientist to take part in one of the greatest technological movements of all time. This, then, is the story of the birth of "Silicon Valley" as told by one who lived some of the forgotten early years. This book covers the early years of the Santa Clara Valley, AKA "Silicon Valley", from the Gold Rush years of the 1850s through the tech boom of the 1990s.