Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the primary lab of the Shockley Transistor Company, was the first company to work on silicon semiconductor devices in what came to be known as Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

. It was purchased by Clevite

Clevite

Clevite, Inc. was a Cleveland, Ohio based manufacturing company, founded as the Cleveland Graphite Bronze Company. The name was changed to Clevite in 1952 with the acquisition of the Brush Development Company. In 1969, Clevite was acquired by Gould-National Batteries...

 in 1960, and officially closed shortly after being sold to ITT

ITT Corporation

ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...

 in 1968. Engineers leaving the company stayed in the area; engineers leaving these companies did the same, and soon an entire industry built up in the San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

.
William Shockley

William Shockley

William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s...

 had studied his undergraduate degree at Caltech and moved east to complete his PhD at MIT.