Hacker Cinema
Silicon Valley
2013 · Film · documentary · 82 min
Directed by Randall MacLowry
In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip — an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances. SILICON VALLEY tells the story of the pioneering scientists who transformed rural Santa Clara County into the hub of technological ingenuity we now know as Silicon Valley.
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9 comments on Hacker News
Silicon Valley is a documentary: https://youtu.be/qyiF3z36H2o?si=9ZsfAFOxSFO5yJgl&t=22
Silicon Valley is one of the most underrated documentaries of the last decade.
Not quite what you're asking, but see this list I have: https://llm-utils.org/Movies+and+documentaries+about+startup+founders
e.g. Pirates of Silicon Valley, Startup.com, Silicon Valley - documentary about Fairchild Semiconductor (2013) - suggested by fullshark on HN
The Blackberry movie was also enjoyable
My favorite early history of Silicon Valley is still the 2013 PBS show ("American Experience: Silicon Valley" - 82 minutes long). I found it to be quite well done:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/
Nobody else has mentioned this, so I will:
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233514/
Pretty great, with high quality historical footage as well. I think you can buy the HD streaming version on Amazon for $10 (258 minutes long, broken into six segments).
Silicon Valley (by PBS) is another:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/
PBS did a great documentary "Silicon Valley"[1] (not to be confused with the show), which I highly recommend.
It tells the amazing story of how Robert Noyce, Arthur Rock, Gordon Moore, and Andrew Grove were absolute pioneers and insanely gifted. A huge loss.
Here is the first 15 minutes of the documentary on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcOoQP7nhl4
I just came here to add - if you like this topic you'll love the documentary on Noyce, Shockley, and the rest of the silicon valley pioneers: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/
This is an excellent read, and if you haven't already seen it, the PBS documentary Silicon Valley is also really good: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/
Saw an early screening in Ann Arbor a few months back. It's definitely worth watching to get an idea of how Silicon Valley was built.
Also worth watching is Steve Blank's secret history of Silicon Valley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo