…it happened here

Alan Kay with prototype of a Dynabook, precursor to the laptop, co-inventor of the first PC at Xerox PARC. [Photo: Marcin Wichary]

Alice Park, international activist and leading suffragette, 1913

First Macintosh mouse developed by David Kelley at IDEO

Children’s Library: young girl at fireplace in America’s first public stand-alone library for children, c 1950

Early Google employees, University Avenue.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Gary Fazzino, community leader: two time Palo Alto Mayor, eighteen years on the city council and VP, Hewlett-Packard

Stanford college basketball legend, Hank Luisetti, the man who invented the running one-handed shot, 1930s.

The legendary Hewlett-Packard garage, 1939

Palo Alto High School basketball legend, Jeremy Lin

Joan Baez, graduate of Palo Alto High School, here shown playing at the Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963

Josina Bol and her donkey, Mickey, 1986. A younger donkey, Perry, later became the model for Shrek. Cornelis Bol invented the mercury vapor lamp.

The Palo Alto Junior Museum, America’s first stand-alone public museum for children, 1944

David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the d.school at Stanford University

Lee De Forest with audion tube, a key element in radio, telephone, radar and television

Frederick Terman, known as the "Father of Silicon Valley" helped launch the careers of numerous leaders of technology

Grateful Dead leader, Jerry Garcia, started his career in Palo Alto at the age of eighteen in 1960. [Wikipedia Commons, photo: Carl Lender]

Young Lucie Stern, late 1890s. Known as Palo Alto’s "Fairy Godmother," she established countless institutions and community buildings in Palo Alto and Stanford.

William Shockley, winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for co-inventing the transistor. [Photo: Carolyn Caddes]

Leland Stanford, Sr., his wife Jane Stanford and their son for whom the university is named, Leland Stanford, Jr. , 1880.

Roy Clay, 1975, "The Black Godfather of Silicon Valley," helped design Hewlett-Packard’s first computers (from Black American History website)

Steve Jobs with the iPhone.

1878, "The Horse in Motion," a photographic study in motion by Eadweard Muybridge done at the Stanford horse farm.

Alto computer, the first PC, Xerox PARC 1973

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It Happened Here

For well over a century, astonishing people in Palo Alto have created innovations that affect the lives of millions of people around the globe. Palo Alto is uniquely poised at the intersection of intellectual, technological, financial and green-energy trends. In many ways, Palo Alto is among the most influential communities in the world—rich with heritage and pride.

A city this vibrant deserves a great museum.

The Palo Alto History Museum will serve as a core resource to connect people from around the world to our city’s dynamic past. It will be a place of great inspiration, designed to help us better understand and more effectively influence the world in which we live.

As the permanent home of the City Archives, the Palo Alto History Museum will showcase the remarkable heritage of Palo Alto through the careful collection, preservation and continued social engagement with precious local artifacts and documents. The space design will inspire community participation, attracting the diversity of our local history-makers while reaching out to the next generation of inquisitive school children.

It is happening here.