President Lyndon B. Johnson Foreshadows Silicon Valley in Supporting “high technology R&D efforts”

Since the 1950s, the Federal government has been the largest supporter of high technology research and development, financing the work in both universities and corporations. The space program greatly accelerated the need for R&D, particularly in the non-defense sector, and the costs were substantial. Governor Brown hoped to make California an R&D center and made that case to the President, who responded positively here.

Typed Letter Signed, on green White House letterhead, Washington, December 10, 1964. “Thank you for your very constructive suggestions on proposals to channel additional Federal resources to the States. The next few years will provide a historic opportunity  to strengthen the Federal-State-local fiscal relationship. Ideas like those in your letter will help narrow the gap between talk and action in this field…I also understand your concern over Federal direct support of non-defense, “high technology” R&D efforts. I look forward to stronger Federal efforts on this front, quite independently of Federal grants to State and local governments…”

California became the hub of software and hardware development and production in the United States and indeed the world, to a degree neither LBJ nor Brown could have imagined at the time.