Before Silicon Valley, New Jersey Reigned As Nation's Center Of Innovation | Hacker News Reader

Before Silicon Valley, New Jersey Reigned As Nation's Center Of Innovation

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188 pointshappy-go-lucky130 comments

Even as Silicon Valley was still in its infancy, a group of organizations including Bell, MCI, GM, and others hired Fred Terman from Stanford to make NJ more like what Silicon Valley (NJ and SV share a ton of similarities, i did a tedx talk about it below [1]) but Terman was unsuccessful. He pointed to how Princeton was not focused enough on applied science the way Stanford was. East coast politics and stock market downturn also hindered his efforts.

Also, don't forget Fort Monmouth, which was across the county, employed an equal number of scientists and was responsible for nearly as many inventions as Bell Labs (much classified). It was the home of the Army's software and signal operations. Just like Silicon Valley, the military kickstarted the world's most productive innovation cores.

New Jersey had (and continues to have) the richest concentration of scientists in the United States. Monmouth County and the Princeton had, for a very long time, the kind of serendipity that makes Silicon Valley so special—that you can walk down the street and bump into a bunch of engineers and VCs while walking your dog and strike up a conversation.

State politics in NJ, unfortunately, doesn't nurture these institutions and the ecosystem has grown weaker. It breaks my heart that Bell Labs is a mall and Fort Monmouth lays fallow when it should be bid out to universities to become the Stanford of the East—the applied sciences university that Fred Terman dreamed about.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LbuqoNGGI

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Monmouth

[3] http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/sep/06/...

FWIW, I had some good experiences at the Princeton Tech meetups a few years ago, if anyone is in that area: https://www.meetup.com/Princeton-Tech/

Stanford of the East title is taken already. :-)

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/dabo-swinney-turned-clemson-mod...

> Swinney enjoys joshing his close friend David Shaw, the Stanford coach, about how Clemson is "the Stanford of the East Coast and they're the Clemson of the West Coast."

That is a new level of aspirational.

Thanks for the YouTube link: I enjoyed your talk.

Thank you, you've made my day!

Many moons ago, I wrote a story for Red Herring magazine(I think) about European attempts to create their own versions of the Valley, so I'd thought about some of the issues. If I had to redo it now, your talk would make it a better article ;-)

The old Bell Labs building is, finally, under a revitalization and reuse of the workspace called Bell Works (http://bell.works/neighborhood/). Based on job listings it seems NVIDIA's AI/Autonomous driving is happening there. As someone who lives close by, but commutes to NYC, I can only hope to see more big name companies move in.

As for Fort Monmouth, pretty much all the offices were moved to Aberdeen as part of the last BRAC. As you stated there was a lot of work being done there related to communications & intelligence (I believe a lot of GPS work was out of there). It was a real hit to the local community when it shut down since it happened in the middle of the housing crisis. A lot of families were forced to short sale or do long commutes. The space is finally up purchase, but sadly it will be getting used to build more condos & a shopping center. There were rumors of Monmouth University and Rutgers wanting to get access to the space but were declined.

But it'll be called Freedom Pointe now, so it has to be good: http://www.njbiz.com/article/20170606/NJBIZ01/170609904/para...

It looks like a low-end flea market. The strings of bare lightbulbs are too much.

Also central to New Jersey's weight as an innovation hub was Princeton University - where Alan Turning met and studied under Alonzo Church.[1].

Also worth mentioning is the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J where Kurt Gödel remained a faculty member until his death in 1978.[2]

Alfred Einstein also spent the last two years of his life working at the Institute. Imagine the conversations Einstein and Godel might have had? If you're interested, this a nice piece worth reading(Gödel and Einstein were walking companions!) [3]

[1] http://www.maa.org/book/export/html/606725

[2] https://www.ias.edu/scholars/godel

[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/28/time-bandits-2

John von Neumann worked in Princeton, I didn't realize the von Neumann architecture was aka the Princeton architecture.

Of course Einstein lived and worked in Princeton too.

Wow. Indeed, I did not know this - he was visiting professor for four years and also ended up at the Institute for Advanced Study:

"In 1929 von Neumann accepted an invitation to come to Princeton as a visiting professor for one term. Given a continuing half-time appointment the following year, he spent one term each year in Princeton and one in Germany until 1933 when, at the age of 30, he accepted appointment as the youngest and one of the first professors in the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study. In 1937 he became a United States citizen."

source: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/von_neumann_...

Many people on HN seem to forget that many strides in computer science, computer architecture, and mathematics came from schools that don't start with an "S" and are from outside of the Bay Area. I think it is more that the definition of how you measure innovation has shifted over time -- now it is based on how many dollars are raised for your venture vs. actual strides being made in academic fields of study.

I find your comment a bit gratuitous. These seminal figures come up somewhat regularly on HN and it's no secret that these great minds hailed from Austria, Britain, Hungary, Germany etc.

Sure, but 100 years ago none of them would have thought of moving to Northern CA, where now they are more likely to go there than the East Coast.

MIT, CMU, Princeton, Harvard and Cornell are all top schools for C.S. and those are all still on the East Coast. None of these schools have any difficulty attracting top talent from around the world.

I got skewered in /r/cscareerquestions several months ago for suggesting that any Ivy had a top-tier CS program. It may not be reality, but there is definitely a strong perception.

It's a very odd perception that I think comes from their size. They tend to be smaller, more focused departments. The education quality is still high and everyone's favorite companies recruit at them.

Agreed! If you actually talk to recruiters and teams at top-tier companies, then the stronger Ivies still do well when it comes to CS careers.

They punch above their weight, but it still helps to be big.

Depends what you mean by top tier. If you look at where CS professors did their Ph.D.s and where they end up teaching the top four are clearly CMU, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley. None of those are an Ivy. A school can be great without literally being top tier. UT Austin is a great law school but there is a top tier in law schools and it's not part of it[1].

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_U...

It was a bit more controversial than I intended, but I still stand by the opinion that Silicon Valley is weighed a lot more than any other location. I don't disagree that the figures come up from time to time, but they are rarely on the top of comments lists unless the submission is specifically about them.

Silicon Valley's great strength is the huge, fluid ecosystem of skilled engineers, executives, funders, and supporting professionals (lawyers, landlords, marketing consultants), all of whom are actively searching for "the next big thing" and want to be part of it. That lets you rapidly scale a company when you've proven it out on a small group.

I grew up in the Boston area, and honestly, I thought there was more genuine technology innovation coming out of Boston-area institutions like MIT, other area universities, Lincoln Labs, MITRE, Raytheon, BBN, etc. The problem was that most of these innovations get strangled in their cradle, because Boston VCs are looking for ways to do things that are already being done better, and aren't willing to take a chance on ideas that look nothing like existing businesses. In Silicon Valley, you can usually find at least one defector who thinks "Well, it's a terrible idea, but I'm going to invest anyway just to see what happens." And that's why you have all these companies that actually started in Boston - Microsoft, Facebook, Reddit, DropBox, YCombinator - but are now known as either "Silicon Valley" or "Seattle" companies.

....but still from a HYPSM.

They have the Ivy League in Germany and Switzerland?

Agreed, and my comment was just that it goes beyond Stanford and Silicon Valley...

Too bad the rest of us are left out ..

Gödel bio by Rebecca Goldstein covers some of the friendship between Gödel and Einstein: http://amzn.to/2rxJexf

No discussion on New Jersey's glorious past is complete without a reference to the most passive-aggressive bridge in the world, located in Trenton http://www.usw.org/blog/2015/intro/trenton-pics.jpg

People often say that about it, but I really like it. Who hasn't felt like that? I feel that way pretty much every day at work.

I actually read that as a statement of pride.

I don't know what's more sad, the fact that NJ killed its own tech scene or that the revival efforts shining example focus on a "company that helps people make money on videos they post on social media".

That's certainly a far cry from inventing the transistor and pioneering radio. Yep, NJ is still (for now) dead to tech.

It reminds me of Columbus, Ohio, which used to be a big Internet and tech hub. Now, only burnt embers and dilapidated warehouses of prior successes remain. The only tech jobs are the fading and hold-over "IT Administrators" at lackluster companies like Nationwide and random health companies.

There have been a few scattershot efforts, very familiar to what is happening in NJ to try and get entrepreneurs to "startup" but it's not about the tech anymore. The real creative soul, and passion, love of science and wonderment of the natural world, which is really what fuels tech, is long gone. I'm sorry but social media marketing is a business, not real innovative technology.

> Some cultural differences were also shaped by the law. New Jersey has strict anti-competitive laws that make it hard to take what you learn at your job and create a new company.

This is probably the biggest influence. SV is built on people who starte working at HP, Microsoft, or Google, then left to found their own company - or straight out of college for the lucky/rich kids like Zuckerberg and Gates. Then there is the wealthy ones who 'made it' sticking around and financing the next generation.

This is very likely the entrepreneurial, internally competitive, and experimentally financed system that was never properly established in NJ. New Jersey had their successful golden era, then instead of fostering the next one they focused only on the big companies, acted protective/insular as big companies do, and got government policy to protect their interests from the young upstarts - instead of fostering them.

A thousand times this. I had a discussion on the plane with a person trying to make their city more like the Bay Area. And they had looked at universities, and air ports, and demographics, and infrastructure. I asked them whether or not their state allowed the enforcement of non-compete agreements? Yes. Do they allow employers to take ownership of all work product even when it is done on the employee's non-work time on non-work equipment? Yes. So I said, first thing you have to do is make both of those 'no', then you can start on the other bits. But allowing people to compete with the people who hired them is essential.

> I'm sorry but social media marketing is a business, not real innovative technology.

Is anything really claiming with a straight face that social media marketing is innovative technology?

I don't think there is any reason to believe that any places, no matter how far sighted, can expect lightning to strike more than once. These booms happen when some technological advance precipitates a cluster of development. Eventually, that technology becomes commoditized, the margins fall out, the work gets shipped overseas. The next boom is going to cluster somewhere else and you're not going to be able to predict what will cause it. Why did the auto industry arise in Detroit? Why did the airline industry arise in Seattle?

When was Columbus, Ohio an internet and tech hub? Are you somehow referring to Batelle? https://www.battelle.org/about-us

Genuinely curious. I used to live in Columbus and knew it mainly for retailers (Express, Limited Brands, etc.), insurance co's, hospitals, some other big co's like Cardinal Health, Batelle, and Ohio State University.

Columbus is bucking the trend in Ohio and other places in the midwest because it's growing. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2017/01/04/...

They also just had a $1 billion exit for Covermymeds, a tech company in the healthcare field. http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170126/covermymeds-sale-for-1...

Anecdotally, just this weekend I was visiting Columbus and stopped by the old house I rented in Victorian Village. I paid $975/month 10 years ago and the same place is renting for $1875/month today.

Anyways, I'm not here to cheerlead Columbus, just genuinely interested in reconciling the picture I have with the one you painted of "dilapidated warehouses" and an Internet/tech hub that lost its way.

Thanks!

P.S. I see your byline: "most of my comments are designed to provoke a response" so well played iamleppert.

They were the home to CompuServe back in the day. FreeNet Columbus Ohio was an early WWW you could dial up to. UUNET had a big co-lo during the heyday, and there was a huge level3 POP.

Lucent Technologies had a big old lab off Bethel rd that I took intro to Unix classes when I was 13. And, of course, Batelle.

I worked for CallTech awhile when it was a startup and later bought by Teleperformance (remember Suzy Waud commercials??). And also I worked at Manta before the jig was up there.

I know about Covermymeds, but I wouldn't call it a tech company either. It's a glorified paper pushing app and I doubt anyone doing anything interesting would want to work there. Cbusr.com was actually pretty cool and one of the last things I remember being interesting in the social space, but hardly revolutionary. TechColumbus is also somewhat of a joke.

I know the downtown area has been growing, but I think thats just a function of millennials wanting to live in the short north/arena district and not in the burbs with their parents.

I do have a dream that one day I'll return to Columbus, seasoned white hair, and actually start a real tech company...

Wow, I knew almost none of that! Thanks for the history. I hope you do make it back to Columbus one day to start that tech company.

For those who are paying attention, Vydia does not do social media marketing. We help our customers protect their video content online. It's a digital rights management platform.

Even worse!

And before NJ the US tech hub was Baltimore. Information technology has been built into the economic history of the United States for quite some time.

The first electronic telegraph ran from DC to Bmore. Prior to the telegraph and it's forerunner, the optical telegraph, the fastest way to transmit goods and information were the Clipper ships coming out of the port of Baltimore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Clipper).

If you're interested in reading more economic history I highly recommend both The Weather Experiment (https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Experiment-Pioneers-Sought-Fu...) and Empire of Cotton (https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Cotton-History-Sven-Beckert/dp...)

I think Wall st sucked up most of the tech talent from NJ. Well over half the IT staff I've seen in the big banks and hedge funds live in NJ and commute in. I dont think tech could compete salary wise, though is starting to change now. Also Virtually all the data centers for NYC banks are in NJ suburbs.

Other Scientists and business people moved into Pharma in the 80s & 90s - which is also not doing so well.

I know a lot of tech staff being made to relocate TO NJ. Due to Manhattan costs. This is a good thing for NJ.

That's a really good point. Brain-drain is a significant factor in any race for intellectual talent, and if you can switch locales just by hopping on a different train, it makes the switching costs that much lower.

For those interested in learning more about Bell Labs I recommend you check out the book "The Idea Factory" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea-factor...).

I bought this book a few weeks ago because of how interesting Bell Labs was - great recommendation!

I saw this and came to make the same recommendation. I just finished this book and it is excellent. As an EE, the chapters on the discovery of the transistor by Brattain and Bardeen up to the experiment where their prototype starts actually amplifying an input signal for the first time represents such a seminal moment in the history of the world. Arguably, it is the most important invention of the 20th century.

Bob Lucky, who was one of the directors of research at Bell wrote a number of books and this one is a fun read.

https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Strikes-Again-Foibles-Engineers...

Just finished it a few weeks ago. One of the better things it does, I think, is show how so many of the people and innovations were intertwined. In truth, getting all of that co-mingling and cross pollination among so many talented individuals is probably one of the Labs' greatest innovations.

It's worth noting that today New Jersey votes for its next governor (primary). Phil Murphy took the time during his campaign to acknowledge the NJ Tech Meetup community (at Stevens Inst. in Hoboken) and has expressed an interest in supporting entrepreneurs. We'll see how the elections go this year and what the next administration does.

I'm a NJ native (NYC metro area), active contributor to open source tech communities, and tech-preneur.

Primary, not general

updated

I just stared an internship at Bell Labs Murray Hill. Growing up in Holmdel, I've been a fan of Bell Labs since childhood and feel so happy to be working here. The atmosphere and energy from all the amazing achievements is really palpable.

Word is the acquisition of Alcatel Lucent by Nokia has really put Bell Labs back into the public spotlight. Excited to see what the future holds and I hope I can still be a part of it!

Congrats. I grew up new HP Labs and felt the same way when I was an intern there over 10 years ago. :)

Do they still have signs marking the places where historic things happened? Like the lab where the transistor was invented, or Claude Shannon's office?

Yes! They also have a museum and a showcase room. I was able to see the first transistor.

I believe they're reconstructing Dennis Ritchie's original office. They still have his chalkboard too.

Make sure you try the pizza at Coppola's at the bottom of Murray Hill on Central Ave.

Boston's Route 128 was a center of innovation in the minicomputer era. DEC, Data General, Prime, and Wang were all Boston-area companies. None survived the transition to microprocessors.

EMC is still kickin

The exact same story is told in the film industry. Edison's patents were very strongly enforced on the east coast, but not in California. All of the film studios then packed up and headed west.

Protectionism in capitalism does not work in the long run. Different forms of it are practiced to this day. US Capitalism is rife with with legislative protectionism.

Interesting seeing this story this morning, my company recently moved into the old Bell Labs building. Now called Bell Works, it does actually look like it's going to become a hub of new tech companies in the area.

It's pretty humbling to walk into this giant building every day knowing some of the amazing things that were invented here.

It must be a great feeling. Imagine transporting yourself back into their time :)

I keep looking for opportunities in Bell Works. I would gladly give up my 2 hour commute from the shore area to NYC to work in Holmdel. I could even ride my bike.

Holy crap. You drive up from the jersey shore to NYC every day??

I take the train which is 78-80 minutes, but all told it takes 2 hours door to door.

There is a train service running from the shore area? From the Atlantic City area? I know there's one out of Trenton.

"The Shore" goes a lot farther north than that. The New Jersey Coast Line runs regular trains from NYC to Long Branch, and has a few trains that go as far as Bay Head (though you need to transfer to get to NYC).

The shore technically encompasses Monmouth County down to Cape May county. There is the North Jersey Coast Line that runs from Bay Head to NYC, but not always direct which requires a change over in Long Branch. This is due to the Long Branch to Bay Head portion not having the newer lines run for the trains.

I know a few people that even take a ferry every morning into NYC as their commute.

Headline is nicely illustrated by a friend of mine who visited the US for the first time, travelled to Menlo Park, CA, and was disappointed that he couldn't find Edison's lab.

According to wikipedia, it also has more engineers per square meter than any state in the US. Not quite the trashy state people are led to believe it is.

Now that NYC is not affordable for startups, NJ will become a perfectly respectable tech/Start up hub. And good for it.

Nah, Jersey is done. The same 1950s attitudes/laws that caused it to lose the industry are still there. That's why it's tech scene consists mostly of big doofy defense contractors and Comcast.

Perhaps, But, I'm wagering that with NYC pricing out anyone but wall st banks, the pressure will build and it will change out of necessity. NJ shall be remade and reborn!

Not with the insane property taxes and other regulatory friction. Highest property taxes in the country. It also has some of the highest auto insurance rates in the country as well. Health insurance is also higher than in neighboring NYC (at least the last time I checked a few years ago.)

All of the Democrat candidates for NJ governor want to raise taxes even more.

NJ also has the most underfunded public pension system in the country. -- a $44 billion shortfall. As a tech entrepreneur, I'd be very nervous about locating in a state that could, at any moment decide that those "wealthy tech companies" ought to be bailing out decades of financial mismanagement.

NJ also ranked 49th in "Small Business Friendliness" -- California was 50th. New York was 48th.

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2014/12/nj_is_a_terribl...

South Dakota, Nevada and Texas were the top three.

If anywhere should be the "next" place, it should probably be Houston -- one of the most diverse cities in the country, low taxes, access to a massive academic medical center, NASA, the energy industry, low cost of living, Rice University (pioneers in nano-tech including a Nobel winners,) University of Houston, including Paul Chu in superconducting. Texas A&M is about an hour away with more Nobel winners, including the 1996 Nobel in Physics and substantial engineering and science research programs

New Jersey does have Princeton of course and access to NYC (if that actually matters.) New Jersey's only "attraction" other than Princeton is "proximity to New York." I would have to see some actual data to be convinced that "proximity to New York" actually has a material affect on the success of startups. It's a fallacy that being in San Fran or NYC actually matters.

Yeah, any engineer would look at the government situation closely. No thank you to NJ. I'm not going to voluntarily take on that ridiculous pension burden.

Houston is a quiet tech hub, it's completely overlooked. But if you're building robots wouldn't you want to sell to the industry that actually uses them and has lots of money to spend? However, Houston has livability issues, and the nice places to live aren't that cheap especially when you factor in property taxes. Still better than NJ.

There is almost zero chance that Houston or anywhere in Texas will be the next place to be. These small business studies have been around for a long long time and has hardly any effect. In fact, the gulf between VC funding in Texas compared to Bay Area and NYC are actually increasing.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/texanomics/article/...

I don't trust measures of "small business friendliness", because more often than not, how "business friendly" a state is really is a measure of how willing they are to gut consumer protection and employee protection laws. Having grown up in South Dakota, I can assure you this is the case there.

"It's a fallacy that being in San Fran or NYC actually matters."

If you want money, which let's be honest, is one of the most important things in this context, it highly does. All of the major VCs are in SF or NYC, and have shown very little desire to branch out from there. While we occasionally hear stories of a startup outside of those places doing well, it's generally the exception, not the rule.

I have to echo this.

You can start a company anywhere, but if you want to grow quickly, there are a few places where you can get the capital, infrastructure, community and talent quickly.

> California was 50th.

What a strange metric they must be using: Silicon valley erupted (and continues to erupt) in CA, land of high taxes and high regulatory environment. And it seems many areas are trying to figure out how to be the next silicon valley.

and Verizon Wireless!

It's also the most densely populated state overall, so it presumably has more of most kinds of people per square meter than most if not all states.