As one of the most famous states in the United States, California's first impression to everyone in the world is sunshine, waves, sand, bikinis, surfboards, convertibles, San Francisco, the birthplace of gold rush, and Hollywood.

And sitting in an open-top car, listening to "Hotel California", and driving along California Highway 1 on the azure Pacific coast is the first dream of countless young people around the world about the United States.

The sun is just right, the sea breeze is cool, the Pacific Ocean waves crash against the black cliffs, splashing the snow-white waves, and on California Highway 1 above, a red convertible Thunderbird gallops from south to north, and the light music spills all the way.

Xu Guanjie put the steering wheel, shook his head and hummed, this second-generation four-door Thunderbird is his favorite car in the United States, Zhang Heng has no driver's license, he volunteered to be the driver of this trip.

Zhang Heng sat in the passenger seat, squinting at the unique hilly terrain of northern Los Angeles, and his mouth was also gently listening to the song playing on the car radio.

Today is January 2, 1973, and naturally there is no "Hotel California", and the radio is playing "Country Road Take Me Home", a heart-warming country ballad.

Yesterday, all the affairs in Los Angeles were completed.

Today, Bai Shaoyi stayed at the exhibition as a representative of Daheng, cooperated with 3M work, and collected more information by the way, Zhang Heng and several people rushed to Palo Alto.

In the early afternoon, they arrived in San Simon and made a special turn to nearby Mount St. Lucia to visit the most famous castle in California and the United States, Fort Hearst.

The castle, which occupies a large hill, was built for 28 years until the death of William I, the founder of the Hearst family, and in 1958, William II, the current head of the Hearst family, donated the newly completed castle to the state of California and opened it to the public.

An hour later, the Thunderbird slowly drove away, Zhang Heng looked in the rearview mirror at the gray-white castle that gradually disappeared behind the hill, and two mixed ancient poems suddenly appeared in his heart: "The carved fence and jade masonry should still be there, but Zhu Yan has changed, and the dancing pavilion is always blown away by the rain and wind." ”

As the founder of the largest newspaper group in the United States, William I was at his peak, and the newspapers under his control directly triggered the Spanish-American War and indirectly led to the assassination of then US President McKinley.

However, it is precisely because of this terrifying power of manipulating public opinion that William Sr. has been feared and even hated by countless people, and has run for mayor of New York twice and for president of the United States once, all of which ended in failure, which made him deeply vigilant and has since reined in a lot of unscrupulous practices.

His second son, William Jr., is well versed in the principle of low-key life, and simply donated this manor-style castle covering a total area of 1,000 square kilometers, thus saving the family's unbearable reputation and being widely praised by all walks of life.

In Western countries, wealth is glory, but everyone, including the government, keeps an eye on those who have great wealth, and one mistake can lead to fatal consequences.

Wealth not only brings countless people a happy life, but also brings heavy responsibilities and pressures, and rich people who are interested in heirlooms for a hundred years will stay sober and reflect on themselves from time to time.

Charitable donations and job creation are all effective means of maintaining the image.

Zhang Heng will definitely take this road, and he must work hard to do it well, because he is in the East, a cultural region that is more sensitive to wealth.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, after lunch at a Spanish restaurant in Santa Cruz, and making an appointment call to the company we were visiting today, several people got on the Thunderbird and left Highway 1 and turned right onto Highway 17.

After a little more than an hour, we crossed a road sandwiched between two small hills and entered a narrow valley surrounded by low hills.

This 50-kilometre-long and 15-kilometre-wide valley stretches from southeast to northwest, and is next to the southern tip of San Francisco Bay.

Santa Clara Valley has arrived.

In January 1971, Don Hofler, a reporter for Electronic News, wrote an article in his magazine, referring to the Santa Clara Valley, formerly known as the "Valley of Joy for the Heart," as "Silicon Valley," and the name has since become a widely accepted lingua franca around the world.

The Thunderbirds stopped at a newsstand in San Jose, Zhang Heng got out of the car and bought a very special "Silicon Valley Map", and then continued north, soon arriving at the destination Palo Alto, which is the heart of Silicon Valley, and their first stop was Stanford University.

Stanford University, founded by a mother who missed her son who died young, has since become a research center leading the development of the electronics industry in the United States and around the world since the 50s of this century.

Silicon Valley, established on Stanford's private land, inherits Stanford's talents and scientific research achievements, and is committed to transforming new technologies and new ideas into new products that can be used in the world.

A university and an industrial park, the two are closely integrated and promote each other, giving birth to the brilliant flower of the electronics industry, and making the greatest progress in the history of human science and technology so far.

It can be said that the core driving force of the information society in the 21st century comes from Silicon Valley.

The Thunderbird drove along two rows of palm-lined college roads, across the avenue that separates the campus from Palo Alto's bustling business district, and in front of the hill a dense forest of Korean pines, with large brown-red roofs looming in the hills below.

At the end of the road, the view suddenly opens up to a large oval meadow spread out at the edge of the greenery, and behind the grass is a large square courtyard typical of the Spanish style, which is the main campus of Stanford University.

A few people stopped their cars and walked across the lawn, past the arches, past the Rodin sculptures, and into the empty inner courtyard, surrounded by the main courtyard, the memorial church, and the towering Ho Fo Pagoda.

Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, claimed to be "the first student of Stanford", and he donated the tower building used as a research institute and museum.

Walking around Stanford, a few people got into the car and drove to the next location on the map, 367 EDITION Ave.

It is a 2-storey bluestone building with a small all-wood garage next to it, and a metal nameplate hanging on the garage door reads:

On January 1, 1939, David Packard and Bill Hewlett officially founded Hewlett-Packard, Inc. (HP).

Two Stanford graduates, a company that uses a coin toss to sort its names, and a simple audio oscillator that was sold at a loss.

At that time, no one would have imagined that the company would have a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars in the future, and the name HP was destined to coexist with Silicon Valley.

The common teacher of the two was Fred Termman, who was the dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University at the time, and it was he who single-handedly promoted Stanford to lease land to establish an industrial park, and personally brought a large number of cattle to Silicon Valley to establish companies, so he will be recognized as the "father of Silicon Valley" in the future.

The garage, which is not much bigger than a kennel, will also become a sacred place in the hearts of all electronic engineers.

On the mottled wooden door, there are countless signatures of visitors, some are still fresh, some have been blurred, Zhang Heng carefully distinguished, and found several names he was familiar with: William Shockley, Charles Spock, Jerry Sanders, Lester Hogan.....

Taking out a black marker from his bag, he signed vigorously in a blank space: Zhang Heng (HK), January 3, 1973.

In the future, my name will be scrutinized like this.