The bit about how semiconductors could only have been made in America because only America had the specific combination of freedom of speech, irreverence, pragmatism over dogmatism, meritocracy and welcoming outsiders is definitely an interesting idea, although how true that is?
America was very much against immigrants between about 1925 and 1965. If you look at the history of the US they needed immigrants to settle the land, before their expansion westward they were quite against immigration.
> America was very much against immigrants between about 1925 and 1965.
And still despite immigration reforms and national origin quotas, USA still accepted by far more immigrants during this time period than any other country.
Not very. The missing macro is that during and after WWII, the US had the luxury of being the only intact industrial economy.
In this environment, Shockley, who himself was the child of an engineer and has been criticized as a eugenicist (ie. explicitly not welcoming outsiders, despite his father speaking eight languages, and being born in London), ran a Bell research lab and was exposed to a plurality of emergent military problems to which he applied physics.
After the war, and co-inventing the transistor (probably largely in response to this wartime experience), some of his ex employees including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore split off and started research under Fairchild.
Notably, this occurred right when chemistry was having its moment, and the US had huge postwar capacity to enable innovation. While total industrial production reached 247% of prewar levels during WWII, chemical production soared to 412%.
The group succeeded in 1960. Of the eight who left to found this novel research group, only two were immigrants. Six were educated at elite US universities like Caltech, MIT and Stanford.
It's genuinely so ridiculous to suggest that freedom and meritocracy (among other things) were why America was able to do this first. This stuff was before the civil rights act.
There are endless stories about Americans being sent to Europe needing to be told that they can't treat black people the way they do at home.
All of the chest thumping about being the land of the free rings hollow when considering how recent some of this history is. The current and previous president were alive when the civil rights act was passed!
More because Europe had just spent half a decade murdering each other on a massive scale, and there wasn't much energy left for basic research for a little while after experiencing a couple dozen megadeaths and the various urban remodeling programs that accompanied them.
Europe has had many decades since then to innovate in technology and they have still not done so. They are almost completely dependent on American and Asian tech. And that is not changing anytime soon.
So yes, it had something to do with WWII, but that's not the only reason.
For instance, Japan and South Korea were both equally devastated and yet they both managed to build world class technology industries in the aftermath.
There's no question in my mind that American industry and capital markets were far better at pivoting to this new industry though.
And still despite immigration reforms and national origin quotas, USA still accepted by far more immigrants during this time period than any other country.
In this environment, Shockley, who himself was the child of an engineer and has been criticized as a eugenicist (ie. explicitly not welcoming outsiders, despite his father speaking eight languages, and being born in London), ran a Bell research lab and was exposed to a plurality of emergent military problems to which he applied physics.
After the war, and co-inventing the transistor (probably largely in response to this wartime experience), some of his ex employees including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore split off and started research under Fairchild.
Notably, this occurred right when chemistry was having its moment, and the US had huge postwar capacity to enable innovation. While total industrial production reached 247% of prewar levels during WWII, chemical production soared to 412%.
The group succeeded in 1960. Of the eight who left to found this novel research group, only two were immigrants. Six were educated at elite US universities like Caltech, MIT and Stanford.
There are endless stories about Americans being sent to Europe needing to be told that they can't treat black people the way they do at home.
All of the chest thumping about being the land of the free rings hollow when considering how recent some of this history is. The current and previous president were alive when the civil rights act was passed!
Why? Mostly because America has true individual freedom and low taxes, unlike Europe.
So yes, it had something to do with WWII, but that's not the only reason.
For instance, Japan and South Korea were both equally devastated and yet they both managed to build world class technology industries in the aftermath.